by Adam Vine
She considered it over an obvious, dramatic pause. “Yes. I forgive you. But you are a vermin sometimes. No. You say pest? You are a pest.”
Kashka kissed me. “Are we still going to the Concentration Camp Museum tomorrow? You said you wanted to go.”
I rubbed my eyelids. They felt heavy. “I can’t miss another day of work this year. Let’s go to the museum next week. I also need to go to sleep early. I can’t stay up this late again.”
“All right. Goodbye, Dan.”
“Kashka, are we okay?”
“Yes. We are okay now.”
“Can I ask you something before you go?”
“Tak.”
“Do you really want a future with me?”
“Tak. I do. Can you not see it?”
“I can see it. Sometimes.”
“Then maybe you have something in your eye.”
THE CITY
I DID EVERYTHING I could to avoid returning to the Night Country.
The first week I drank five cups of coffee a day. I didn’t get to sleep until two or three A.M., and even then, I woke up every hour to go to the bathroom. I didn’t drink alcohol because I thought it would help me sleep. I went for late night runs and ate big meals right before bed to ensure I wouldn’t get a good night’s rest. At night I would read about sleep cycles on the Internet. But instead of cutting back on things that prevent deep sleep, I increased them. Dragging myself out of bed in the morning felt like rising from the dead.
I didn’t want to be anyone’s savior. I’d spent my whole life fantasizing about being the hero. That redemption was my siren. I think most people have moments where they desire that. We all have our demons. That’s what the Hero’s Journey is about, isn’t it? It isn’t about saving the world, but saving us from ourselves, a compass meant to help us navigate through this blinding blizzard we call existence, and to find our way again when we stumble and lose our path.
But finding your way after you’ve lost it is a lot easier said than done. It’s easy to be a good person if you’ve never done anything truly wrong. It’s much harder to be one once you’ve hurt someone else, even if that harm was by accident. You carry that weight forever, if only in dreams.
Can a bad person become good? I don’t know. I probably never will. But I like to think that it’s possible. Ever since Carly died, I had staked my life on the proposition that it was. It was the only hope I had.
But now that someone had actually put their faith in me to really, truly be good, I didn’t want it. How was I supposed to help anyone else? I didn’t deserve to be the hero. To me, a hero is someone like Zaea, a person obviously carrying a great deal of pain and worry for the future, but who keeps it inside, who stands by and lifts up those who need her, those hopeless souls such as myself, even when she has no reason to.
Me? I wasn’t the Wanderer Returned. I was nothing but a fraud, an imposter, and it was only a matter of time before the whole Burrow knew it.
I tried my hardest not to sleep, and it worked, for a little while. But sleep is a debt collector, not so different than one’s sins. You can run from it all you want, but eventually it’s going to catch up to you.
I wish there had been some cataclysmic event that broke my chain of sleepless nights, some epic fight with Kashka or a callous message from Evan, perhaps some harrowing betrayal at work that made me drink myself into a deep despair. But for once Kashka and I were relatively stable, Evan still hadn’t written me back, and my work on Arkadius, while obnoxiously redundant, plodded steadily on.
It was an uneventful weeknight when I finally went back. I was simply too sleep deprived, and no amount of caffeine could keep me awake.
THE BURROW
“SNOWMEN HAVE two weaknesses. The first is that they’re blind. Keeping your eyes is a privilege among the Eyeless. Only their alphas and children have them. The rest cut them out when they reach the age of the Ritual. What is the Ritual, you new people ask? It’s the only one the Snowmen have. They sacrifice their own eyes to the Crippled King, who they worship as a god. Absolutely, skull-numbingly disgusting, right? Well, it gets worse.
“Their blindness may be compensated by extremely heightened senses of hearing and smell, but they still can’t see shit. That’s your first advantage. The second is that they’re morons – almost as stupid as you, Bunny Rabbit. You gossip and giggle during my mission briefing, I guarantee I will march right down off this dais and stick my boot so far up your ass you’ll be tasting leather. Am I understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, sir. Loud and clear, sir,” Bunny Rabbit said.
Barn Owl, Zaea, me and the other Vermin stood gathered by the ice block in the Last Station morgue next to an empty table. When the Vermin’s muffled laughter dissipated, Barn Owl cleared her throat and resumed.
“Some of you are going to die today. If you think that’s a laughing matter, I implore you, for your own sake, to leave this morgue right now and stay home. You’re wasting everyone’s time, and the rest of us who take this shit seriously don’t want you fucking up our program.
“The target location is heavily fortified. That means Snowmen, and not just a hunting party or two, but a few hundred, which means at least a dozen alphas. It means Shells, too... lots of Shells.”
“Uh, Barn Owl, I mean sir, I have a question,” I said, raising my hand.
“Go ahead,” Barn Owl said.
“How many of these Lice… I mean Shells… are there going to be?”
Barn Owl shrugged. “How should I know? Could be two, could be two hundred. Our scouts haven’t gotten close enough to the facility to get an accurate number. So, as usual, prepare for the worst-case scenario. Anything else?”
“Yeah, actually. What about weapons?”
Barn Owl cut me off. “While I won’t say that’s a good question, since it’s not, I don’t blame you for being green in the boots enough to ask. Every time I look at you, I keep seein’ Len. It’s goddamned weird thinkin’ he’s not the one in there askin’ me this shit. Everyone, make a conscious note: this is Daniel speaking. Daniel, say hello.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve already met everyone,” I started.
“Just do it,” Barn Owl said.
“Uh… okay. Hi everyone. My name’s Dan. I’m not from here.”
“We know,” the Vermin said in unison.
“To answer your question, outfitting comes after the briefing,” Barn Owl said. “First, we need to do a little science project. You and Zaea are going to examine him.” Barn Owl looked around the room, like she was waiting for something, or someone. When nothing happened, she cleared her throat, and said louder, “You and Zaea are going to examine HIM.”
“Shit, hang on, all right? This bastard is heavy,” Cheese Eater’s voice echoed from behind the ice block, to a loud scrape and a rustle of cloth.
Cheese Eater appeared dragging a huge, pale corpse under the arms toward where the rest of us were gathered around the empty table. Even though his back was to us, I knew from the smell and the crude, shoddily sewn fur mantle the corpse wore over its shoulders that it belonged to a Snowman.
Alternating between great, theatrical aplomb and short, struggling breaths, Cheese Eater brought the Snowman into the middle of the group, squatted, and hurled the corpse onto the table in front of us.
The Vermin all covered their noses. Zaea gagged and turned away, covering her mouth with her arm. The dead Snowman smelled worse than the most pungent garbage dump, a festering rankness of musk, armpit odor, urine and feces.
The Snowman’s appearance was even more sickening than its scent. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the one I had killed during the blizzard, only a cursory glimpse in the wan ghost light of the tundra.
Up close, the Snowman was a hundred times more hideous than any image my mind could have reconstructed from those frantic, scattered memories. It appeared to be male, though its genitals remained thankfully covered by its loincloth. Its belt was made from corded lengths of dark, greasy hair I coul
d only assume was human. The Snowman’s face was a Rorschach mask of scars and misplaced eyes, all sewn shut by fat, black threads. His mouth was a gaggle of rotten teeth the color of mud all filed to jagged tips. The fingers, hands, and arms bore hundreds of nasty, crescent moon scars from being repeatedly eaten.
I’d witnessed the Snowman on the tundra eating his own fingers in anticipation of the warm meat he thought he was going to get when he saw me, but it didn’t make sense. No matter how hard calories were to come by up there on the frozen wasteland of the Surface, there couldn’t possibly be any sort of net gain in energy from eating your own flesh – that small amount of meat wouldn’t even cover the biting and chewing, not to mention the catastrophic deficit needed to heal the wounds. A theory formed in my mind that this behavior was a social mechanism meant to exhibit a high tolerance to pain. Infection probably wasn’t as much of a concern at sub-zero temperatures, and the cold would act as a numbing agent. But if scars meant status in Snowman-land, this guy had to be pretty high on the totem pole.
“What’s wrong with his eyes?” Zaea said, pulling me out of my philosophical tangent.
“I told you. They cut them out. Weren’t you listening?” Barn Owl said.
“Yes.”
Barn Owl cocked her head. “The Frosties are dumb as a sack of frozen breakfast links, but they’re smart enough to know who’s boss up there, and it ain’t us.”
“So what are we examining, exactly?” I said.
“Have you ever killed one of these things before, asshole?” Barn Owl said.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Actually, I have.”
The tall woman’s eyes narrowed. She turned to the others gathered around the examination table. “Y’know what? I just remembered. If these two are gonna be Vermin – as loathe as I am to let that happen, since I’d rather let their asses rot, but orders are orders – then, they need to have Vermin names. I say we call this one Leech.” She gestured to me with her thumb. “’Cuz he sucks the fun outta everything.”
“I do not,” I said.
Zaea giggled.
Barn Owl quick-drew her dagger, almost faster than I could see, and poked the blade into the Snowman’s torso. The pressure was hard enough to make an indentation, but not so hard it broke the skin. “Snowman’s different than us, biologically. You kill a man-man, you slash his throat, bury your blade in his heart, or maybe in his liver, you stab his fucking eyeballs out. But a Snowman ain’t got eyeballs, and his anatomy is tougher. You need to know where the soft parts are.”
Barn Owl motioned for us to look where her knifepoint was pressing, at the top of the bowling ball-sized protrusion of the Snowman’s belly. “The bladder is to Snowmen what our lungs are to us. You puncture or cut this open, right here, he won’t die right away – he’ll wet out slow - but the steam will scare him so bad he’ll be outta the fight. You know that feelin’ you get when you have to take a piss for hours and hours, but there ain’t nowhere for you to go? That’s the Snowman’s whole life. His bladder is gargantuan, five or ten times larger than a man’s. His urine is also very hot. He needs the extra water and the hotter temperature to thaw his meat. Not a whole lotta wood up on the surface to build campfires.”
Nature didn’t give them that adaption. Someone engineered that, I thought.
“I saw it once,” I said.
Barn Owl raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, really? You must be special, Leech.”
Cheese Eater’s voice piped up from the back of the small crowd. “No he’s not. The kid just knows a thing or two about havin’ cold meat.”
The Vermin all laughed. Even Zaea.
I flipped Cheese Eater the bird.
“Watch what you do with that finger, boy. Wouldn’t want it to end up on me necklace,” Cheese Eater said. The little man stood on his tiptoes so he could see me through the crowd. He held up a corded band from around his neck that was strung with tiny bones.
“Hey, it’s all good, buddy. No offense intended. It’s just that where I’m from, it’s considered rude to interrupt the teacher when she’s talking, especially to make a low effort dick joke,” I said.
Cheese Eater’s brow furrowed. “Low effort…?”
Barn Owl hooted. “Hah! Don’t make any plans to civilize this one, Leech. He’s beyond redemption. But he has a point, Cheese. Save it for when we’re back home drinking a celebration beer over the success of our mission. Then you can posture on each other all you want.”
“Sorry, sir,” Cheese Eater said.
“Moving on,” Barn Owl said. She pointed her dagger at the dead Snowman’s throat, lifting up his beard with the sheath to show us. “The throat is another good target, same as a human. But don’t make it your primary one. Anyone want to explain why we don’t attack their throats, for the new people?”
Mongoose raised her hand.
“Mongoose, go ahead.”
Mongoose said something I couldn’t hear.
“Louder, Auntie. We can’t hear you,” Barn Owl said.
“The beards,” the stout woman spoke up. She drew an invisible beard in the air in front of her own fuzzy, rectangular chin.
“And why are their beards a problem?” Barn Owl said.
“They freeze.”
“Thank you, Auntie. Frozen beards will be a problem if you try to slash a Snowman’s throat in a fight. Snowmen have an uncanny ability to spill shit when they eat and drink, which is usually done on the Surface, where said shit freezes practically the instant it gets spilt. A frozen beard probably sounds silly to you greenboots – shouldn’t it just shatter? Don’t we have Wyvernwood blades forged by the People of the Sun sharp enough to penetrate a Louse’s armor?
“Yes, and yes. A Frostie’s beard won’t stop a blade, but it can deflect your cut enough that you’ll miss the killing blow. Anyone who’s fought one of these things, ‘specially the alphas, knows that’s a bad idea. Even an error that small can end up costing you your life.
“Now, the Snowmen don’t all have long beards, but most do, even the females. If you find one who doesn’t, go ahead and give him – or her – a good old crimson grin. Otherwise, avoid attacking the throat unless it’s your last resort.”
Seeing no raised hands, Barn Owl moved the knife onto her next, and final point of demonstration. “Last one. The heart. Let’s talk about the heart. A Snowman’s heart is the source of his life, just like us. The problem with trying to hit a Snowman in his heart, or liver, or lungs, is what, Vermin?”
“He has a protective layer of fibrous tissue to prevent his vital organs from freezing,” the Vermin said.
They either practiced that, or they’ve heard this same speech so many times they have it memorized, I thought. But if that’s true, greenboots in the Vermin must have an extremely low survival rate.
Barn Owl offered Zaea and me her dagger. “Which one of you is doing the honors?”
“I’m good. I’ll just watch.” I said.
Zaea took the dagger, throwing me a dirty look, and stepped close to the Snowman’s corpse. “Where should I make the incision?” she said.
“Make a four-inch cut over his heart. Deep as you can,” Barn Owl said.
Zaea held the dagger up to the light, studying the edge. The light glanced off it like thrown fire. “Not Wyvernwood, just old fashioned iron, but it’s sharp enough to shave with. I did this morning,” Barn Owl said.
Zaea made a face and went to work, carefully placing the blade on the pale, soggy-looking flesh of the Snowman’s left pectoral, then drew a line that bit the skin in two. The dagger cut easily through the fat and muscle, but was stopped short of the ribs by something that made an audible scrape, like the sound of fingers dragging on whiteboard.
Zaea gave Barn Owl a puzzled look. She lifted the knife and tried again, slightly to the left of her original cut. Again the barrier inside the Snowman’s chest deflected her blade. Zaea seesawed the knife, and then tried outright hacking and stabbing at the Snowman’s chest, but she couldn’t p
enetrate its inner husk.
Finally, when Zaea was red-faced and huffing, Barn Owl took the dagger back from her, and with a powerful, single downward thrust, buried the blade in the Snowman’s chest. The husk made a loud pop.
“Chest is a bad target,” Barn Owl said. “Even spears and arrows don’t always punch through. The gut is unprotected, though – ‘specially the bladder.”
“What about the skull?” I said, remembering the pink flower that had blossomed on the forehead of the Snowman I’d killed when I hit him with my makeshift wooden sword.
Barn Owl shrugged. “Or you could smash ‘em in the head, if that’s your style. Whatever lights your torch, Leech.”
The tall woman clasped her hands behind her back and snapped her heels. In an instant the Vermin all stood quietly, their backs straight, heels together, and hands held up to their faces in a five-finger salute.
“All right, chuckleheads, it’s time to go to the Armory and get these Greenies set up with some sharp things they’ll no doubt end up hurting themselves with. If I see any of you walking, jogging, half-running, or going at any pace slower than a full sprint, you will be taking rear guard up on the ice. A little hint for you greenboots - that’s not a job you want. Do you understand me, Vermin?”
“We understand you, sir!” the Vermin said.
“Then let’s get moving.”
THE BURROW
THE ARMORY was located in a low, vaulted chamber that at one time had been the catacombs of a church. There were dozens of crevices that ran well beyond the light of the two glowmoss lanterns by the door. The crevices were filled with piles upon piles of weapons: daggers, throwing knives, short swords, long swords, bastard swords, executioner’s swords, small spears, big spears, halberds, staves, long axes, short axes, pick axes, ice axes, bows and arrows, crossbows and quarrels, whips, scythes, bear traps, and myriad other items for making war.
The weapons were well-organized, those of poorer quality occupying the lower alcoves, with the better ones up top. There were lots of low-quality weapons, but few good ones. The bottom alcoves, those nearest the floor, were practically overflowing with chipped, rusted, cracked, shoddy, and broken tools of every category, most made from wood and old, brown iron. The alcoves at waist height were much emptier, but the weapons there were made of steel and polished wood, some that looked quite decent, most in various states of disrepair.
