The Host 8 page

Melanie was frozen in my head, unthinking, blank, trying desperately to reject this new comprehension. I waited for her, my eyes tracing the undeniably familiar shapes, until the sudden weight of her acceptance and grief knocked me to my knees. Her silent keen of defeat echoed in my head and added one more layer to the pain. My breathing turned ragged‑a soundless, tearless sobbing. The sun crept up my back; its heat soaked deep into the darkness of my hair.

My shadow was a small circle beneath me when I regained control. Painstakingly, I got back on my feet. Tiny sharp rocks were embedded in the skin on my legs. I didn’t bother to brush these off. I stared at the floating mesa mocking me from the west for a long, hot time.

And finally, not really sure why I did it, I started walking forward. I knew only this: that it was me who moved and no one else. Melanie was so small in my brain‑a tiny capsule of pain wrapped tightly in on her herself. There was no help from her.

My footsteps were a slow crunch, crunch across the brittle ground.

“He was just a deluded old lunatic, after all,” I murmured to myself. A strange shudder rocked my chest, and a hoarse coughing ripped its way up my throat. The stream of gravelly coughs rattled on, but it wasn’t until I felt my eyes pricking for tears that couldn’t come that I realized I was laughing.

“There was… never… ever… anything out here!” I gasped between spasms of hysteria. I staggered forward as though I were drunk, my footprints trailing unevenly behind me.

No. Melanie uncurled from her misery to defend the faith she still clung to. I got it wrong or something. My fault.

I laughed at her now. The sound was sucked away by the scorching wind.

Wait, wait, she thought, trying to pull my attention from the joke of it all. You don’t think… I mean, do you think that maybe they tried this?

Her unexpected fear caught me midlaugh. I choked on the hot air, my chest throbbing from my fit of morbid hysteria. By the time I could breathe again, all trace of my black humor was gone. Instinctively, my eyes swept the desert void, looking for some evidence that I was not the first to waste my life this way. The plain was impossibly vast, but I couldn’t halt my frantic search for… remains.

No, of course not. Melanie was already comforting herself. Jared’s too smart. He would never come out here unprepared like we did. He’d never put Jamie in danger.

I’m sure you’re right, I told her, wanting to believe it as much as she did. I’m sure no one else in the whole universe could be this stupid. Besides, he probably never came to look. He probably never figured it out. Wish you hadn’t.

My feet kept moving. I was barely aware of the action. It meant so little in the face of the distance ahead. And even if we were magically transported to the very base of the mesa, what then? I was absolutely positive there was nothing there. No one waited at the mesa to save us.

“We’re going to die,” I said. I was surprised that there was no fear in my rasping voice. This was just a fact like any other. The sun is hot. The desert is dry. We are going to die.

Yes. She was calm, too. This, death, was easier to accept than that our efforts had been guided by insanity.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

She thought for a moment before answering.

At least I died trying. And I won. I never gave them away. I never hurt them. I did my best to find them. I tried to keep my promise… I die for them.

I counted nineteen steps before I could respond. Nineteen sluggish, futile crunches across the sand.

“Then what am I dying for?” I wondered, the pricking feeling returning in my desiccated tear ducts. “I guess it’s because I lost, then, right? Is that why?”

I counted thirty‑four crunches before she had an answer to my question.

No, she thought slowly. It doesn’t feel that way to me. I think… Well, I think that maybe… you’re dying to be human. There was almost a smile in her thought as she heard the silly double meaning to the phrase. After all the planets and all the hosts you’ve left behind, you’ve finally found the place and the body you’d die for. I think you’ve found your home, Wanderer.

Ten crunches.

I didn’t have the energy to open my lips anymore. Too bad I didn’t get to stay here longer, then.

I wasn’t sure about her answer. Maybe she was trying to make me feel better. A sop for dragging her out here to die. She had won; she had never disappeared.

My steps began to falter. My muscles screamed out to me for mercy, as if I had any means to soothe them. I think I would have stopped right there, but Melanie was, as always, tougher than I.

I could feel her now, not just in my head but in my limbs. My stride lengthened; the path I made was straighter. By sheer force of will, she dragged my half‑dead carcass toward the impossible goal.

There was an unexpected joy to the pointless struggle. Just as I could feel her, she could feel my body. Our body, now; my weakness ceded control to her. She gloried in the freedom of moving our arms and legs forward, no matter how useless such a motion was. It was bliss simply because she could again. Even the pain of the slow death we had begun dimmed in comparison.

What do you think is out there? she asked me as we marched on toward the end. What will you see, after we’re dead?

Nothing. The word was empty and hard and sure. There’s a reason we call it the final death.

The souls have no belief in an afterlife?

We have so many lives. Anything more would be… too much to expect. We die a little death every time we leave a host. We live again in another. When I die here, that will be the end.

There was a long pause while our feet moved more and more slowly.

What about you? I finally asked. Do you still believe in something more, even after all of this? My thoughts raked over her memories of the end of the human world.

It seems like there are some things that can’t die.

In our mind, their faces were close and clear. The love we felt for Jared and Jamie did feel very permanent. In that moment, I wondered if death was strong enough to dissolve something so vital and sharp. Perhaps this love would live on with her, in some fairytale place with pearly gates. Not with me.

Would it be a relief to be free of it? I wasn’t sure. It felt like it was part of who I was now.

We only lasted a few hours. Even Melanie’s tremendous strength of mind could ask no more than that of our failing body. We could barely see. We couldn’t seem to find the oxygen in the dry air we sucked in and spit back out. The pain brought rough whimpers breaking through our lips.

You’ve never had it this bad, I teased her feebly as we staggered toward a dried stick of a tree standing a few feet taller than the low brush. We wanted to get to the thin streaks of shade before we fell.

No, she agreed. Never this bad.

We attained our purpose. The dead tree threw its cobwebby shadow over us, and our legs fell out from under us. We sprawled forward, never wanting the sun on our face again. Our head turned to the side on its own, searching for the burning air. We stared at the dust inches from our nose and listened to the gasping of our breath.

After a time, long or short we didn’t know, we closed our eyes. Our lids were red and bright inside. We couldn’t feel the faint web of shade; maybe it no longer touched us.

How long? I asked her.

I don’t know, I’ve never died before.

An hour? More?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Where’s a coyote when you really need one?

Maybe we’ll get lucky… escaped claw beast or something… Her thought trailed off incoherently.

That was our last conversation. It was too hard to concentrate enough to form words. There was more pain than we thought there should be. All the muscles in our body rioted, cramping and spasming as they fought death.

We didn’t fight. We drifted and waited, our thoughts dipping in and out of memories without a pattern. While we were still lucid, we hummed ourselves a lullaby in our head. It was the one we’d used to comfort Jamie when the ground was too hard, or the air was too cold, or the fear was too great to sleep. We felt his head press into the hollow just below our shoulder and the shape of his back under our arm. And then it seemed that it was our head cradled against a broader shoulder, and a new lullaby comforted us.

Our lids turned black, but not with death. Night had fallen, and this made us sad. Without the heat of day, we would probably last longer.

It was dark and silent for a timeless space. Then there was a sound.

It barely roused us. We weren’t sure if we imagined it. Maybe it was a coyote, after all. Did we want that? We didn’t know. We lost our train of thought and forgot the sound.

Something shook us, pulled our numb arms, dragged at them. We couldn’t form the words to wish that it would be quick now, but that was our hope. We waited for the cut of teeth. Instead, the dragging turned to pushing, and we felt our face roll toward the sky.

It poured over our face‑wet, cool, and impossible. It dribbled over our eyes, washing the grit from them. Our eyes fluttered, blinking against the dripping.

We did not care about the grit in our eyes. Our chin arched up, desperately searching, our mouth opening and closing with blind, pathetic weakness, like a newly hatched bird.

We thought we heard a sigh.

And then the water flowed into our mouth, and we gulped at it and choked on it. The water vanished while we choked, and our weak hands grasped out for it. A flat, heavy thumping pounded our back until we could breathe. Our hands kept clutching the air, looking for the water.

We definitely heard a sigh this time.

Something pressed to our cracked lips, and the water flowed again. We guzzled, careful not to inhale it this time. Not that we cared if we choked, but we did not want the water taken away again.

We drank until our belly stretched and ached. The water trickled to a stop, and we cried out hoarsely in protest. Another rim was pressed to our lips, and we gulped frantically until it was empty, too.

Our stomach would explode with another mouthful, yet we blinked and tried to focus, to see if we could find more. It was too dark; we could not see a single star. And then we blinked again and realized that the darkness was much closer than the sky. A figure hovered over us, blacker than the night.

There was a low sound of fabric rubbing against itself and sand shifting under a heel. The figure leaned away, and we heard a sharp rip‑the sound of a zipper, deafening in the absolute stillness of the night.

Like a blade, light cut into our eyes. We moaned at the pain of it, and our hand flew up to cover our closed eyes. Even behind our lids, the light was too bright. The light disappeared, and we felt the breath of the next sigh hit our face.

We opened our eyes carefully, more blind than before. Whoever faced us sat very still and said nothing. We began to feel the tension of the moment, but it felt far away, outside ourself. It was hard to care about anything but the water in our belly and where we could find more. We tried to concentrate, to see what had rescued us.

The first thing we could make out, after minutes of blinking and squinting, was the thick whiteness that fell from the dark face, a million splinters of pale in the night. When we grasped that this was a beard‑like Santa Claus, we thought chaotically‑the other pieces of the face were supplied by our memory. Everything fit into place: the big cleft‑tipped nose, the wide cheekbones, the thick white brows, the eyes set deep into the wrinkled fabric of skin. Though we could see only hints of each feature, we knew how light would expose them.

“Uncle Jeb,” we croaked in surprise. “You found us.”

Uncle Jeb, squatting next to us, rocked back on his heels when we said his name.

“Well, now,” he said, and his gruff voice brought back a hundred memories. “Well, now, here’s a pickle.”

CHAPTER 13. Sentenced

Are they here?” We choked out the words‑they burst from us like the water in our lungs had, expelled. After water, this question was all that mattered. “Did they make it?”

Uncle Jeb’s face was impossible to read in the darkness. “Who?” he asked.

“Jamie, Jared!” Our whisper burned like a shout. “Jared was with Jamie. Our brother! Are they here? Did they come? Did you find them, too?”

There was barely a pause.

“No.” His answer was forceful, and there was no pity in it, no feeling at all.

“No,” we whispered. We were not echoing him, we were protesting against getting our life back. What was the point? We closed our eyes again and listened to the pain in our body. We let that drown out the pain in our mind.

“Look,” Uncle Jeb said after a moment. “I, uh, have something to take care of. You rest for a bit, and I’ll be back for you.”

We didn’t hear the meaning in his words, just the sounds. Our eyes stayed closed. His footsteps crunched quietly away from us. We couldn’t tell which direction he went. We didn’t care anyway.

They were gone. There was no way to find them, no hope. Jared and Jamie had disappeared, something they knew well how to do, and we would never see them again.

The water and the cooler night air were making us lucid, something we did not want. We rolled over, to bury our face against the sand again. We were so tired, past the point of exhaustion and into some deeper, more painful state. Surely we could sleep. All we had to do was not think. We could do that.

We did.

When we woke, it was still night, but dawn was threatening on the eastern horizon‑the mountains were lined with dull red. Our mouth tasted of dust, and at first we were sure that we had dreamed Uncle Jeb’s appearance. Of course we had.

Our head was clearer this morning, and we noticed quickly the strange shape near our right cheek‑something that was not a rock or a cactus. We touched it, and it was hard and smooth. We nudged it, and the delicious sound of sloshing water came from inside.

Uncle Jeb was real, and he’d left us a canteen.

We sat up carefully, surprised when we didn’t break in two like a withered stick. Actually, we felt better. The water must have had time to work its way through some of our body. The pain was dull, and for the first time in a long while, we felt hungry again.

Our fingers were stiff and clumsy as we twisted the cap from the top of the canteen. It wasn’t all the way full, but there was enough water to stretch the walls of our belly again‑it must have shrunk. We drank it all; we were done with rationing.

We dropped the metal canteen to the sand, where it made a dull thud in the predawn silence. We felt wide awake now. We sighed, preferring unconsciousness, and let our head fall into our hands. What now?

“Why did you give it water, Jeb?” an angry voice demanded, close behind our back.

We whirled, twisting onto our knees. What we saw made our heart falter and our awareness splinter apart.

There were eight humans half‑circled around where I knelt under the tree. There was no question they were humans, all of them. I’d never seen faces contorted into such expressions‑not on my kind. These lips twisted with hatred, pulled back over clenched teeth like wild animals. These brows pulled low over eyes that burned with fury.

Six men and two women, some of them very big, most of them bigger than me. I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized why they held their hands so oddly‑gripped tightly in front of them, each balancing an object. They held weapons. Some held blades‑a few short ones like those I had kept in my kitchen, and some longer, one huge and menacing. This knife had no purpose in a kitchen. Melanie supplied the name: a machete.

Others held long bars, some metal, some wooden. Clubs.

I recognized Uncle Jeb in their midst. Held loosely in his hands was an object I’d never seen in person, only in Melanie’s memories, like the big knife. It was a rifle.

I saw horror, but Melanie saw all this with wonder, her mind boggling at their numbers. Eight human survivors. She’d thought Jeb was alone or, in the best case scenario, with only two others. To see so many of her kind alive filled her with joy.

You’re an idiot, I told her. Look at them. See them.

I forced her to see it from my perspective: to see the threatening shapes inside the dirty jeans and light cotton shirts, brown with dust. They might have been human‑as she thought of the word‑once, but at this moment they were something else. They were barbarians, monsters. They hung over us, slavering for blood.

There was a death sentence in every pair of eyes.

Melanie saw all this and, though grudgingly, she had to admit that I was right. At this moment, her beloved humans were at their worst‑like the newspaper stories we’d seen in the abandoned shack. We were looking at killers.

We should have been wiser; we should have died yesterday.

Why would Uncle Jeb keep us alive for this?

A shiver passed through me at the thought. I’d skimmed through the histories of human atrocities. I’d had no stomach for them. Perhaps I should have concentrated better. I knew there were reasons why humans let their enemies live, for a little while. Things they wanted from their minds or their bodies…

Of course it sprang into my head immediately‑the one secret they would want from me. The one I could never, never tell them. No matter what they did to me. I would have to kill myself first.

I did not let Melanie see the secret I protected. I used her own defenses against her and threw up a wall in my head to hide behind while I thought of the information for the first time since implantation. There had been no reason to think of it before.

Melanie was hardly even curious on the other side of the wall; she made no effort to break through it. There were much more immediate concerns than the fact that she had not been the only one keeping information in reserve.

Did it matter that I protected my secret from her? I wasn’t as strong as Melanie; I had no doubt she could endure torture. How much pain could I stand before I gave them anything they wanted?

My stomach heaved. Suicide was a repugnant option‑worse because it would be murder, too. Melanie would be part of either torture or death. I would wait for that until I had absolutely no other choice.

No, they can’t. Uncle Jeb would never let them hurt me.

Uncle Jeb doesn’t know you’re here, I reminded her.

Tell him!

I focused on the old man’s face. The thick white beard kept me from seeing the set of his mouth, but his eyes did not seem to burn like the others’. From the corner of my eye, I could see a few of the men shift their gaze from me to him. They were waiting for him to answer the question that had alerted me to their presence. Uncle Jeb stared at me, ignoring them.

I can’t tell him, Melanie. He won’t believe me. And if they think I’m lying to them, they’ll think I’m a Seeker. They must have experience enough to know that only a Seeker would come out here with a lie, a story designed for infiltration.

Melanie recognized the truth of my thought at once. The very word Seeker made her recoil with hatred, and she knew these strangers would have the same reaction.

It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m a soul‑that’s enough for them.

The one with the machete‑the biggest man there, black‑haired with oddly fair skin and vivid blue eyes‑made a sound of disgust and spit on the ground. He took a step forward, slowly raising the long blade.

Better fast than slow. Better that it was this brutal hand and not mine that killed us. Better that I didn’t die a creature of violence, accountable for Melanie’s blood as well as my own.

“Hold it, Kyle.” Jeb’s words were unhurried, almost casual, but the big man stopped. He grimaced and turned to face Melanie’s uncle.

“Why? You said you made sure. It’s one of them.”

I recognized the voice‑he was the same one who’d asked Jeb why he’d given me water.

“Well, yes, she surely is. But it’s a little complicated.”

“How?” A different man asked the question. He stood next to the big, dark‑haired Kyle, and they looked so much alike that they had to be brothers.

“See, this here is my niece, too.”

“Not anymore she’s not,” Kyle said flatly. He spit again and took another deliberate step in my direction, knife ready. I could see from the way his shoulders leaned into the action that words would not stop him again. I closed my eyes.

There were two sharp metallic clicks, and someone gasped. My eyes flew open again.

“I said hold it, Kyle.” Uncle Jeb’s voice was still relaxed, but the long rifle was gripped tightly in his hands now, and the barrels were pointed at Kyle’s back. Kyle was frozen just steps from me; his machete hung motionless in the air above his shoulder.

“Jeb,” the brother said, horrified, “what are you doing?”

“Step away from the girl, Kyle.”

Kyle turned his back to us, whirling on Jeb in fury. “It’s not a girl, Jeb!”

Jeb shrugged; the gun stayed steady in his hands, pointed at Kyle. “There are things to be discussed.”

“The doctor might be able to learn something from it,” a female voice offered gruffly.

I cringed at the words, hearing in them my worst fears. When Jeb had called me his niece just now, I’d foolishly let a spark of hope flame to life‑perhaps there would be pity. I’d been stupid to think that, even for a second. Death would be the only pity I could hope for from these creatures.

I looked at the woman who’d spoken, surprised to see that she was as old as Jeb, maybe older. Her hair was dark gray rather than white, which is why I hadn’t noticed her age before. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, all of them turning down into angry lines. But there was something familiar about the features behind the lines.

Melanie made the connection between this ancient face and another, smoother face in her memory.

“Aunt Maggie? You’re here? How? Is Sharon ‑” The words were all Melanie, but they gushed from my mouth, and I was unable to stop them. Sharing for so long in the desert had made her stronger, or me weaker. Or maybe it was just that I was concentrating on which direction the deathblow was going to fall from. I was bracing for our murder, and she was having a family reunion.

Melanie got only halfway through her surprised exclamation. The much‑aged woman named Maggie lunged forward with a speed that belied her brittle exterior. She didn’t raise the hand that held the black crowbar. That was the hand I was watching, so I didn’t see her free hand swing out to slap me hard across the face.

My head snapped back and then forward. She slapped me again.

“You won’t fool us, you parasite. We know how you work. We know how well you can mimic us.”

I tasted blood inside my cheek.

Don’t do that again, I scolded Melanie. I told you what they’d think.

Melanie was too shocked to answer.

“Now, Maggie,” Jeb began in a soothing tone.

“Don’t you ‘Now, Maggie’ me, you old fool! She’s probably led a legion of them down on us.” She backed away from me, her eyes measuring my stillness as if I were a coiled snake. She stopped beside her brother.

“I don’t see anyone,” Jeb retorted. “Hey!” he yelled, and I flinched in surprise. I wasn’t the only one. Jeb waved his left hand over his head, the gun still clenched in the right. “Over here!”

“Shut up,” Maggie growled, shoving his chest. Though I had good reason to know she was strong, Jeb didn’t wobble.

“She’s alone, Mag. She was pretty much dead when I found her‑she’s not in such great shape now. The centipedes don’t sacrifice their own that way. They would have come for her much sooner than I did. Whatever else she is, she’s alone.”

I saw the image of the long, many‑legged insect in my head, but I didn’t make the connection.

He’s talking about you, Melanie translated. She placed the picture of the ugly bug next to my memory of a bright silver soul. I didn’t see a resemblance.

I wonder how he knows what you look like, Melanie wondered absently. My memories of a soul’s true appearance had been new to her in the beginning.

I didn’t have time to wonder with her. Jeb was walking toward me, and the others were close behind. Kyle’s hand hovered at Jeb’s shoulder, ready to restrain him or throw him out of the way, I couldn’t tell.

Jeb put his gun in his left hand and extended the right to me. I eyed it warily, waiting for it to hit me.

“C’mon,” he urged gently. “If I could carry you that far, I woulda brought you home last night. You’re gonna have to walk some more.”

“No!” Kyle grunted.

“I’m takin’ her back,” Jeb said, and for the first time there was a harsher tone to his voice. Under his beard, his jaw flexed into a stubborn line.

“Jeb!” Maggie protested.

“’S my place, Mag. I’ll do what I want.”

“Old fool!” she snapped again.

Jeb reached down and grabbed my hand from where it lay curled into a fist against my thigh. He yanked me to my feet. It was not cruelty; it was merely as if he was in a hurry. Yet was it not the very worst form of cruelty to prolong my life for the reasons he had?

I rocked unsteadily. I couldn’t feel my legs very well‑just prickles like needle points as the blood flowed down.

There was a hiss of disapproval behind him. It came from more than one mouth.

“Okay, whoever you are,” he said to me, his voice still kind. “Let’s get out of here before it heats up.”

The one who must have been Kyle’s brother put his hand on Jeb’s arm.

“You can’t just show it where we live, Jeb.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Maggie said harshly. “It won’t get a chance to tell tales.”

Jeb sighed and pulled a bandanna‑all but hidden by his beard‑from around his neck.

“This is silly,” he muttered, but he rolled the dirty fabric, stiff with dry sweat, into a blindfold.

I kept perfectly still as he tied it over my eyes, fighting the panic that increased when I couldn’t see my enemies.

I couldn’t see, but I knew it was Jeb who put one hand on my back and guided me; none of the others would have been so gentle.

We started forward, toward the north, I thought. No one spoke at first‑there was just the sound of sand grinding under many feet. The ground was even, but I stumbled on my numb legs again and again. Jeb was patient; his guiding hand was almost chivalrous.

I felt the sun rise as we walked. Some of the footsteps were faster than others. They moved ahead of us until they were hard to hear. It sounded like it was the minority that stayed with Jeb and me. I must not have looked like I needed many guards‑I was faint with hunger, and I swayed with every step; my head felt dizzy and hollow.

“You aren’t planning to tell him, are you?”

It was Maggie’s voice; it came from a few feet behind me, and it sounded like an accusation.

“He’s got a right to know,” Jeb replied. The stubborn note was back in his voice.

“It’s an unkind thing you are doing, Jebediah.”

“Life is unkind, Magnolia.”

It was hard to decide who was the more terrifying of the two. Was it Jeb, who seemed so intent on keeping me alive? Or Maggie, who had first suggested the doctor ‑an appellation that filled me with instinctive, nauseated dread‑but who seemed more worried about cruelty than her brother?

We walked in silence again for a few hours. When my legs buckled, Jeb lowered me to the ground and held a canteen to my lips as he had in the night.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Jeb told me. His voice sounded kind, though I knew that was a false interpretation.

Someone sighed impatiently.

“Why are you doing this, Jeb?” a man asked. I’d heard the voice before; it was one of the brothers. “For Doc? You could have just told Kyle that. You didn’t have to pull a gun on him.”

“Kyle needs a gun pulled on him more often,” Jeb muttered.

“Please tell me this wasn’t about sympathy,” the man continued. “After all you’ve seen…”

“After all I’ve seen, if I hadn’t learned compassion, I wouldn’t be worth much. But no, it was not about sympathy. If I had enough sympathy for this poor creature, I would have let her die.”

I shivered in the oven‑hot air.

“What, then?” Kyle’s brother demanded.

There was a long silence, and then Jeb’s hand touched mine. I grasped it, needing the help to get back on my feet. His other hand pressed against my back, and I started forward again.