When Shua reaches for him, I catch his arm. Something feels wrong.
“He’s shivering,” Shua says. “The wound must be infected.”
He gives Holland’s shoulder a shake and whispers, “Holland. Wake up.”
When he gets no reply, Shua pushes the man onto his back. He’s shivering so violently that his teeth clack together. The sound sends a chill down my back.
“I don’t think he’s shivering,” I say, as his face comes into focus. His red skin is now gray, the color of death, but living. And then with a gurgle that startles me, an orange glow ignites beneath his clothing, flaring bright enough to reveal the horror on Shua’s face.
33
“Golyat,” I whisper, stepping back from Holland. “How is that possible?”
The idea that Holland has always been a Golyat, but intelligent and in disguise, crosses my mind. The idea is as revolting as it is nonsensical. Nothing about it fits.
“His finger,” Shua says. “It got inside him. It’s changing him.”
“Making him a Golyat.” And there it is; the missing knowledge that reveals why our ancestors weren’t able to kill all the Golyats. They were the Golyats. Or became them. Some survived, but if the Earth was really populated by billions of people, the Golyat numbers must have spread around the globe. Separation was the only means of survival.
That there aren’t more Golyats is a testament to just how many were killed in that ancient war. Unless…there are more somewhere else.
What really matters is that there is one more of them now, and unlike the rest, this one has a name, a past, and loved ones.
“We need to kill it,” I whisper.
“But…that’s Holland.”
“Is it?”
The Holland-Golyat claws at itself, tearing away clothing as though it were rotted and weak. Black eyes snap open, locking onto me, and then Shua. The orange in his gut flares brighter. He spasms in pain, clutching his stomach and turning away.
I draw one of my three new machetes, and Shua his new sword.
“Kill him,” I say, aware that I’m asking Shua to do what I can’t bring myself to do. Holland’s disgust for me is well known. If I kill him, it could look like I decided to take his life out of spite, rather than self-defense, or even mercy.
And when I hear Dyer’s voice, I know that’s exactly how it will be taken. “What in the name of the ancestors are you doing?” The question is followed up by the slow pull of a sword from its sheath.
She can’t see him, I realize. Shua and I are in the way.
“Step away from my husband.”
“It’s not Holland,” Shua says. “Not anymore.”
“Step. Away.” Sensing that Dyer is close to raising her voice, which could summon even more trouble, I take a slow step to the side.
Shua does the same, catching my eye as he moves. There is a threat in front of us now, and a threat behind. One of them needs to be killed, the other simply disarmed. Shua has the skill for both jobs, but we both know I could never defeat Dyer in combat.
But Holland. I could take his head.
When Shua taps his own chest, angles his thumb toward Dyer, and then points at me and Holland, I nod. He’s come to the same conclusion.
But maybe such action won’t be necessary. If Dyer can just see.
“Look at him,” I say. “It’s not Holland.”
The man who used to be Dyer’s husband twitches, his back to us. His body convulses as he stands.
“What did you do to him?”
“He’s changing,” Shua says. “Into one of them.”
“Holland,” Dyer says, but her husband’s only reaction is to stand up, tearing away the last of his clothing. “Holland!”
The shout catches the newborn Golyat’s attention. It swivels around, eyeing Dyer. As much as it is no longer Holland, some vestiges of the man remain. It’s enough to draw Dyer a little closer, though her sword is still drawn and no longer held toward Shua.
“Holland…” Dyer’s sword lowers, the anger leached out of her.
She stares into his black eyes, and for a moment, I think I see sadness pulling Holland’s eyebrows together. But then he lurches forward and staggers back.
The orange flares brighter still, drawing a high-pitched squeal from Holland. As his body convulses, his face sinks in, transforming from a look of new death, to ancient decay. His skin blackens and dries, the outer layers cracking and curling. The effect moves down, charring him, sucking the muscle and fat downward, toward the blazing gut, leaving dry, desiccated flesh behind. His legs shrink in as well, the meat moving up with slug-like undulations.
His stomach swells with his own insides, fuel to the flame.
Teeth chatter.
Roiling fluids gurgle.
Skin stretches, full of liquified insides.
Dyer raises her sword, ready to end her husband, but then Holland’s squeal becomes a shriek. Every last vestige of the man disappears as he roars at his wife, bending forward, arms open to grasp, fingers hooked.
“Back!” Shua shouts. “He’s going to burst!”
And then he does, but not how any of us envisioned.
As the skin of Holland’s stomach blackens, hardens, and constricts, there’s a wet pop and then a frantic spray vents from his back side. A foul scent like nothing I’ve ever experienced wafts through the air as Holland shits himself out.
I stagger away from the stench, which is growing worse now that the forest behind him is being liquified, too. When the stream begins to spatter in a wide arc, I back up faster. “Don’t get any on you! It’s what changed him.”
What happens next goes beyond strange and right into impossible. As the last of his insides drain out, his body grows. Arms and legs lengthen. Skin stretches and cracks, sheets of it falling away. In seconds, he’s a foot taller and a little more intimidating, though he is still shorter than both Shua and Dyer.
A fuller understanding of the Golyats burrows into me. When they eat, they grow. A lot.
How many people has that big one consumed? I wonder. Hundreds? Thousands? More? How big can they get?
My fuller understanding has left me with more questions to which there are no answers.
“What’s happening?” Plistim asks, staggering as he awakens.
“Golyat!” Del says from somewhere behind me. Her voice is followed by a grunt and then the snap of a bowstring.
The arrow strikes Holland with enough force to punch through his head before being embedded in a tree. The shot puts a neat hole in one side of his head, and a large hole in the other, taking a good portion of his brain with it.
The mortal wound doesn’t drop Holland, but it does stagger him.
If not for the growing puddle of waste around him, he’d make an easy target.
Whatever damage was done by having a portion of his brain removed is short-lived. Body hollowed out, dried, and darkened, Holland turns his eyes on us once more, moving from one to the next, perhaps sensing the world as fully Golyat for the first time.
A second arrow punches through Holland, this time puncturing his neck. The blow has even less effect, but that’s because she missed her mark. She was aiming for his spine. Had she struck it, Holland’s new torturous existence would have been brought to a swift end.
“It’s hard to see,” Del complains. The light from above, from the stars and the dust ring, is enough to see by, but not see well.
A torch flares to life in Salem’s shaking hand. “There!” The forest is filled with a flickering orange glow and dancing shadows that are sure to draw the attention of anything looking in this direction. Since I haven’t heard a response to our shouts, I don’t spend long worrying about it. Holland is enough to worry about for the moment.
“Stop,” Dyer shouts, holding a hand out to Del, who has already nocked another arrow. “It should be me.”
As wounded as Dyer must be, she’s expressing it with anger and resolution.
Del holds her fire, while the res
t of us back away, granting her wish.
As we fade into the trees, Holland’s focus shifts to the woman standing her ground. He looks her up and down like he might have upon their first meeting, but his black eyes are full of a different kind of hunger. His stomach growls and flares, warning of an attack.
Dyer takes a defensive stance, ready to swing, but unable to close the distance between herself and her husband without stepping in steaming Golyat waste.
So she waits.
But not long. Tendrils of smoking fluid drip from his teeth as he bares them, cracking lips and cheeks apart.
His body flexes, stretching out its new form, ribs snapping apart, expanding within his chest, making him look even more malnourished, despite just having made a meal of himself.
Holland takes an unsteady step, nearly slipping as the gray soup around him oozes up between his gnarled toes. He recovers, taking another step, and then another.
“C’mon, Love,” Dyer says, moving back, matching Holland’s pace. She has tears in her eyes, but doesn’t falter. Holland is already dead. The monster that is left needs to be dealt with before she can mourn him.
As I watch the pair moving through what had been our campsite, I do a quick mental count of our group and come up short. Where is Shoba? I’m about to ask aloud, when I find her, sound asleep at the base of a tree just a few feet away from Holland. Exhaustion made her immune to the sound, but the fire light is making her stir. I want to warn her, to tell her to stay quiet, but in her drowsy state she’s likely to question my order.
When Holland pauses his advance, what’s left of his nostrils twitching, I know it’s too late. His black eyes shift toward her curled up form, now stretching open, almost welcoming.
“Shoba!” I shout, lunging toward the girl, hoping to yank her away.
Her eyes snap open just as Holland reaches for her.
We both catch her by an arm, but he doesn’t need to pull her away, just a little closer.
“No,” Dyer shouts, rushing in, but we’re both too late. As Shoba lets out a scream, Holland’s mouth opens wider than should be possible, and clamps down on Shoba’s face.
I see flashes of the sweet girl. Her smile. Her comforting presence. In a world of conflict and harsh living, her soul is a rare one. Was a rare one. Despite her heart still beating, despite there still being air in her lungs, her life has just come to an end. She cannot survive this, so I decide to end her suffering.
My anguished scream blocks out the sound of metal severing flesh and bone.
Confused when Shoba’s body falls away from her head, Holland spits her crushed head from his mouth and refocuses on Dyer.
Holland lunges, reaching out for his wife, mouth open to bite.
Dyer swings the sword in an arc that robs Holland of both arms from the elbows down. She rolls to the side avoiding his jaws.
Holland staggers, but doesn’t fall. As he turns around to face her, his arms drain a mixture of fluids, all of them eating up the earth.
“Recover your gear,” I tell the others, fighting back sobs and tears. I can’t help but feel like I killed Shoba. I know everyone will understand, that my actions we merciful, but that doesn’t change the fact that her blood now stains my blade. Her human blood, I remind myself. Had Holland not consumed her, Shoba would have become Golyat, too. Like Holland. Even the smallest exposure to his blood could lead to one of us being transformed into a monster. Should his insides strike anything, it will become useless to us—like Dyer’s now steaming sword.
I watch while the others yank our gear away from the scene, but I remain rooted in place, ready to help my old friend kill her once-husband. But she doesn’t need my help.
Holland charges again, this time reaching out with stubs.
Dyer angles her steaming sword up into his ribs. The blade slips through his body, locking in place between his bones. She pivots and twists, spinning Holland around and using his own momentum to pin him against a tree.
“Live free or die,” Dyer says to her husband. “It’s time for you to be free.”
Dyer withdraws the blade, spinning around and swinging hard.
I duck as a spritz of sizzling liquid arcs out from the sword, which has cut through dried skin, taut flesh, and thickened bone.
Dyer lets go of the sword and stumbles back, sickened by what she’s done and what’s become of her husband, who despite having obvious flaws, she loved.
Holland’s husk of a head falls away, rolling to the ground. His body scrapes down the tree, leaving a trail of smoldering wood in its wake. The sword bends at the middle and falls apart.
I relax my stance, fall to my knees, and weep for Shoba. But before my first tear can reach the ground Salem says, “Dyer! Your sleeve!”
All eyes turn to Dyer’s arm. Just above the elbow, her clothing is wet and steaming, the digestive fluid eating through the garment, seeking out her flesh.
34
“Shit, shit, shit,” Dyer says, trying to shed the clothing without touching the affected area. When she can’t manage it, she draws a knife, cuts the fabric up the middle and slides out. The loose garment falls to the ground, revealing Dyer’s powerful form. While her shape is all woman, she has more muscle mass than Shua.
I close in while Dyer inspects the rest of her clothing, quickly checking one fold after another. “See anything?”
I’m about to say I don’t, when I do. And it’s not on her clothing. A small dot the size of a tick is smoldering on the back of her arm. I take the limb and lift it closer to my face.
Dyer hisses through her teeth. “What did you do? That hurts.”
“Don’t move,” I say, but she starts to twist. “I said, don’t move!”
My shout locks her in place.
“What is it?” she asks.
My answer is swift and without voice. The knife in my hand is so sharp, and the cut so fast, that it takes a moment for her to feel the pain. But she feels it at the same moment the small fillet of her arm falls into the leaf litter at her feet.
She reels away, clutching the wound, blood squeezing between her fingers. “Fuck did you do to me?”
“Bandage,” I shout to Shua, who retrieves a clean wrap of cloth from his bag and tosses it to me. He then draws a knife and holds it in the flame of Salem’s torch, which we need to extinguish soon.
I approach Dyer, bandage in hand, but she eyes me warily.
“Let me bandage it.”
“Tell me,” she says.
“Your hands are dirty,” I tell her. “You’re going to get an infection.”
“Vee, damn it, we just cut off the heads of two people we love. I can take whatever shit you have to say.”
“You had some on your arm,” I tell her. “Just a drop. So I cut it away. And deep. We’ll need to cauterize it.”
“Wasn’t enough to take my husband’s finger, you needed a piece of my arm, too?” Her anger melts into regret. “I’m not blaming you. I just…that didn’t work either. We’d be better off increasing the head count to three.”
“We don’t know how it works,” I say. “He dipped his finger in it. You barely felt the drop before I cut it away.”
“She’s right,” Plistim says, sliding into his backpack. Salem and Del are already prepped to move. “We don’t know enough to make any kind of determination.”
“But you will if you don’t kill me. You can track how long it takes me to change.” Dyer dips her head toward Salem. “I’m guessing you already worked out the time between when Holland lost his finger and now.”
The discomfort on Salem’s face says that he has.
“You just want to study me,” Dyer says. “I would rather die now.”
I’m about to come to Plistim’s, and Salem’s defenses, when the elder says, “You’re not wrong. Knowing how communicable the…transformation is, not to mention how long it needs to take root, and turn you into…well. All of that knowledge would be beneficial to all of us. But to be honest, I hope the only thing we l
earn is that it cannot be spread by a single drop that’s been cut away. Holland was your husband, but we are your family. All of us.”
Plistim’s words are spoken with calm determination, but I can see he’s struggling, and not because of Holland. Shoba’s death is weighing heavily on all of us, but no doubt heaviest on her grandfather, who brought her on this insane journey. With so many of his people lost or dead, the burden he carries must be immense. That Shoba’s death didn’t break him speaks to the man’s indominable fortitude.
Dyer’s defenses sag, but she says nothing.
Shua steps in front of Dyer. “If the time comes, when the pain is too great, I will free you from it.” He glances at me, nodding what I think is thanks and a silent communication that I will not have to take another friend’s head.
Dyer offers a sad smile and leans her head forward. Shua places his forehead against hers.
“Until then,” he says. “I expect you to fight. Now…hold your tongue.”
Dyer’s eyes go wide. “What—”
Her voice is cut off by the sizzle of burning flesh. She grunts in pain from the scalding, but manages to keep her mouth shut. Shua holds his knife to the wound longer than seems necessary, and then pulls it away.
“Asshole,” Dyer says.
“Balm and a bandage,” Shua says.
I supply him with the bandage he’d given me, and take the balm offered by Plistim. Shua dips his fingers in the herbal concoction and smears it over the wound. Dyer winces, but doesn’t make a sound.
A minute later, the wound is sealed, treated, and bandaged.
“Try not to use the arm for a few days,” Shua says.
I’m sure Dyer heard him, but she says nothing. She just turns to her husband’s remains and stares.
A distant chatter puts a chill in the air.
Salem extinguishes the torch.
“It is time,” Plistim says. “The smell will draw attention.”
The observation puts the stench back on the forefront of my mind, and I nearly vomit in revulsion. While Del and Salem move away, finding our direction with the stars, I whisper a goodbye and an apology to Shoba’s body. Shua stands by my side, sniffing back his own tears. “She was as close to a daughter as I’ve ever known.”
The Divide Page 20
