Dwindle

  Chapter Six: Hunter, Hunted

  I hopped back into the tower for a better view of the strange Outlanders. I counted four voices, two men, two women, both old and young.

  “Chess!” I whispered softly. “Chess, wake up! Look with me!”

  He didn’t wake up, so I swung back out to my perch.

  They had been running hard – from what, I didn’t know – but I heard their breathing. It looked like they were carrying something heavy. I wondered if it was one of the bombs, for I had heard bombs were very popular among warring folk. But I quickly dropped this idea when I remembered bombs made fire and were carried in huge metal birds in the sky.

  The words were spoken in tongues I could not understand and I could decipher very little of what was said. They ran from dogs. I smelled as much as heard the snarling beasts, and I wondered with a clenching how long the Outlanders had been pursued.

  The Outlanders were in the worst and final stage of the hunt. The waiting part.

  Abruptly, one of their males shouted,

  “Ali – shut up!”

  There was quiet.

  “Chess!” I moved over to him and shook him. “Hey! There are Outlanders! Wake up, you stupid…”

  I sighed and looked back at them, my Outlanders.

  Their accents were definitely foreign. It didn’t bring me the excitement I had always dreamed it would. Awe, yes, but not joy. Not exactly. It brought me fear and confusion. They were not magical creatures, not tall, knowing bringers of truth from the Kingdom of Death beyond the Great Gate. They were humans. Humans in terrible danger.

  I considered stopping it, stopping their deaths. But it didn’t take me long to contradict myself. Outlanders brought no end to trouble, probably, and Hand didn’t need trouble. We were up to our neck with it as it were. I thought, in the words of Evergreen, live and let live.

  At the same time, I knew not to help would be cruel. I would not be letting them live. I would be letting them die. I was not like that, no matter what Evergreen taught. I hated killing things. I knew Evergreen had enjoyed it because she was horrible, but I liked to think that I was different. I hated, absolutely hated, killing things.

  “We have no ammo left, Pierce,” the older female said.

  She spoke to the Elder man, and the last word she said sounded unfamiliar to me, so I guessed that it was his title. It was an ugly title, I thought – not like one I had ever heard of. Our titles represented an aspect of our birth. Foot’s was because his foot had been malformed when he was born, but it grew in better with a healer. Chess was named as such because his mother said his eyes were checkered with color, like a chess board.

  The name Pierce was without meaning, without code, and it seemed dead to me.

  “There’s no ammo left,” she said again.

  Live and let die was not my philosophy.

  “Where did it all go?” the youngling woman asked. “You said we had more! Where did it go?”

  “In the wolves’ hides, I’d guess,” the man called Pierce said quietly.

  I heard the word “wolves,” and I guessed that he referred to his lack of ammunition in correlation to the hunters that were after them. Smart.

  The woman named Ali dropped to the ground and my eyes moved down to her.

  “Find something to throw,” she ordered.

  I didn’t know what she was saying, but I believed, in her panic, that she was searching in vain for some sort of weapon. Her foolishness was amusing. Or it would have been if I didn’t know she was minutes, maybe even seconds, from death.

  “We have to defend –”

  “Get out of here, dammit!” the voice on the ground said.

  His was the last voice.

  I heard by his tone he wasn’t used to being ignored.

  “Just go!” he shouted.

  It sounded like he was in pain and that he was obviously exhausted. I wondered if he had been the thing that they were carrying.

  And then, finally, I understood. The man on the ground was injured. The wolves hunted his weakness, and he offered himself. Smart and brave.

  I whirled the gun around so the strap was in front and began to climb down to the surface of the rubble on which they stood. Upon reaching it, I looked about and realized how different the familiar scene was in the dark. I raised my gun again, squeezing it with white knuckles, and peered at the group from behind a corner of the wall. I turned back quickly with a racing heart. They were, indeed, human and were therefore worthy of salvation.

  I stared around for the enemy. I took safety from the fact that it could not be an Undead, as Undead couldn’t hide or hunt. They just attacked. It had to be a dog, and where there was one there were at least three. I switched my gun to automatic with a loud click.

  “What was that?” the man named Pierce asked. “Did you hear that?”

  I peeked around again. They ignored the wall, and me as much as the wall, so I decided I did not need to hide around the corner. They would not notice me, regardless.

  The woman Elder was shaking her head, like she wanted to deny the inevitable.

  “We can’t get out of here, Pierce…not with him.”

  She gestured to the invalid on the ground, the young man. She cried hard, afraid. I didn’t understand a word of what she said, but her acceptance, instead of saddening me, annoyed me greatly. I was like the injured man. I felt a kinship with him.

  “Don’t be a baby…” the young woman snarled.

  I heard the word “baby,” and I decided to pity the Ali woman. Perhaps she had a child on her. I searched her stomach for a protrusion. There was none. I was confused at her words and where it was that her baby was located. It occurred to me that perhaps Outlanders left their children away from them sometimes. It sounded barbaric to me. I couldn’t imagine doing it to any child. But I did not know their customs. Anything was possible.

  The thought annoyed me more than disgusted me. These were no angels of death. Just people. My annoyance turned to blatant exasperation, and my need to save them was replaced only by my obligation to do so. I knew that I had fought with death many times and won. I could help them out surely, even if it was sort of like cheating.

  I suddenly saw the dogs. They had their heads down and their shoulders up. The eyes flashed at me. They lingered briefly. After a moment’s confusion, they continued towards their original prey. It gave me chills as they passed. Only the strongest would survive, and that usually meant the smartest. Those without intelligence, things like dogs, were given sense.

  I climbed back up the wall to get a vantage point, deciding that it was best not to risk the dogs losing their senses and attacking me instead. The dogs surrounded the group by the time I reached the balcony in which Chess still slept.

  I held the gun up to my face, waiting for my turn to strike. A scope told me where the chest of the largest and closest dog was. He was the alpha male. Just like my uncle. And I hated Rhyme more than I could breathe. With this thought, I took up my adrenaline and fired. Each time the animals fell, I took a breath and fired at the next one. It was a liquid, fluid motion, and I knew the hunter was hunted.

  I jumped down over the group, and landed before my victims, catching myself with a slight stumble. The dogs were starving, I saw. It was the second time in a day I had put down what was not mine to put down. Hunger should have taken them, but I had interrupted the chain and done so instead. Surely, I would feel the wrath of God later on. Even if it was a better death than the slow one they had been given, it was not my place or my responsibility to perform the rite.

  I pulled out another bottle of alcohol and broke it on top of them without thinking. A match was lit. I stared down at them in a new panic as I saw their skin ignite beneath the flame. They weren’t just dogs. The dogs, I saw, were Undead. Their skin was pale, and much of the hair I had anticipated to be there was nowhere to be found. The pallid skin underneath was a sickly, veiny color, and the faces and teeth of the creatures were twisted and yellowy.
Their tongues were black, and their blood was black. Just like the Undead.

  And they had been slinking in the dark.

  I tried to tell myself that it was impossible. Animals with the Undeath didn’t live. I had watched the dogs run right into Hives, and I saw the effects. It wasn’t pretty. Usually, the dogs just wailed and shook and ran around in circles until something, some force, made them stop moving. That was how it happened. That was how it had always happened. That was how it was yet supposed to be. Their bodies were not compatible with our sickness.

  But, all in a moment, I saw that things were going to change again.

  The Undeath had evolved, and it was so be that no one would be safe anymore. Not even me.

  A gust of wind suddenly blew embers at my face, forcing me to face the change I had just made for those Outlanders. I held my breath, taking them in. I could do nothing to undo what I had just done. I had beaten their deaths. They were dependent on me.

  I suddenly had the feeling I had done something very, very wrong. I began to run.