Immobility

his suit to dull it, and then fell down beside him.

“Is it safe here?” asked Horkai. “Do we have enough cover?”

“Either we do or we don’t,” said Qatik. “It is too late now to worry.”

“But we could—,” started Horkai.

“No more words,” said Qatik. “They are coming.”

But it was long minutes before they actually arrived, heralded by their voices. Horkai and Qatik stayed there, flat on their bellies, and waited. “Brother!” He could hear them shouting. “Brother!”

“Why do you hide from us?” intoned a voice as the trio came into range. Horkai could see them now from under the shelter of the truck. “Brother, show yourself and join hands with us. Take your proper place beside us.” It was the large man missing an ear.

“Brother,” said another voice, one of the smaller men. He was distinguishable from the other small man due to the lumpiness of his head. “If you reveal yourself now, things will not go as badly for you as they will if we have to search for you later.”

The other man did not say anything for the time being. This man, at least from this distance, looked enough like Horkai that he could have been his actual, rather than his metaphorical, brother. Did I have a brother? Horkai wondered. Do I have a brother?

He watched the shining backs of their heads as they moved on. “Brother!” shouted the large man again. “We forgive you for what you have done. We do not hold you responsible for what you did to Mahonri. We understand, we swear to you, that it was all a misunderstanding. The man you injured will live. Were he conscious, I am certain he would proffer you his forgiveness and ask you to return with us, to join us in our holy task.”

He watched the triune move farther up the road, still shouting, still trying to flush him out, until finally they became inaudible and disappeared from sight.

“Let’s go,” said Horkai.

“No,” said Qatik. “Wait a moment.”

And so they waited a time more, crouched under the rusted hulk of a truck, in the heat and the dust, listening, keeping their eyes pinned on the road.

When after a few minutes the air was still quiet, Horkai repeated his request.

“Yes,” said Qatik. “Time to go,” and inched out from under the truck. A moment later he grabbed Horkai by a foot and dragged him roughly out as well.

“We will still take the other road,” Qatik said. “Just in case.”

“All right,” said Horkai. He might have said more except Qatik had already forked him under the arms and spun him around, lifting him high and depositing him on his shoulders. This in itself would have simply been business as usual, except for what Horkai saw.

* * *

IT HAD BEEN QUICK, just a glimpse; he wasn’t exactly certain that he had seen what he thought he’d seen. Qatik had already started off, keeping to one side of the road rather than the middle, just in case the trio decided to double back. He was moving quickly, Horkai’s body jogging up and down, but he still managed to bend just a little and lean just a little, and look carefully at the back of the suit’s right arm.

A short tear, perhaps an inch or two long, through the suit’s outer layer though not through the inner one as far as he could see. Qatik must have done it crawling under the truck. Not so bad as if there were a tear down to flesh, but still, a torn outer layer couldn’t shield him as well, would give him, or at least part of him, more unwanted exposure. It would, no doubt, kill him quicker.

Horkai opened his mouth to say something but then stopped himself. Should he say anything? Qatik would be dead soon in any case. If he knew about the tear, would he give up sooner? Besides, it was just his arm, an extremity rather than his torso or head, and so it probably wouldn’t make that much difference, probably wouldn’t speed up his death much at all. Or am I just telling myself that because I don’t want to have to break the news to him? Guardian of humanity indeed.

They jounced along, Horkai turning the problem over in his head, trying to understand if there was something he should do, even something he must do. But no matter how he looked at the problem, there was always something to make him question each decision. And so, in the end, it was easier to suspend the question, not to make a decision at all. I’ll do it later, he told himself, and then mentally added maybe.

* * *

THE ROAD THEY TOOK SOUTH skirted the hospital where they had killed the rogue, where Qatik had presumably left Qanik’s body. On the other side were the remnants of a low stone wall, the backs of condominiums visible above it, relatively intact but with their porches rotted off. The road quickly narrowed. They went past the hospital, and behind its parking lots saw a string of clinics and medical facilities, including a collapsed storefront with a jumble of partially melted prosthetic limbs spilling out of it. What was left of a sign a little farther down read

MOUNTA

PEDIA

Like some sort of strange new reference guide, thought Horkai absurdly.

On the other side, the stone wall disappeared and the backs of condominiums were replaced by the fronts of houses.

They crossed another large road. “Shall we turn here?” asked Horkai. But Qatik said, “No. Not yet.” On the far side, instead of houses, there was a large parking lot and large building with a shattered glass front, shelves inside with small bottles on them or scattered all over the floor. Perhaps a pharmacy, thought Horkai. And then more houses, the backs of them this time, on a hill twenty feet or so above the roadway. On the other side of the road were neither buildings nor houses but only a steep slope downward. Horkai could see the road rising before them and realized they must be climbing again. Qatik was going slower now, no longer jogging, and Horkai could hear the sound of his ragged breathing crackling through his speaker.

They crossed another road, this one curving quickly out of sight to both left and right. He asked Qatik again if they should take it, but Qatik again said no, not yet. The downward slope to the left of them became even more severe and was bounded now by a metal barrier. From his place on Qatik’s shoulders, he could see past it and out over the whole valley.

They came to another crossroads, the other road this time wide and straight. This time when Horkai asked, Qatik said, “Yes, here is where we shall turn.” From there they went two miles or so east down a gentle incline to reach the freeway, and then south again along the freeway, climbing uphill again. They passed a huge penitentiary, then something else with a barbed wire fence around it. The light was very dim, the sun having leaked all the way to the west and threatening now to disappear behind the mountains.

“All downhill from here,” Qatik told him.

Horkai took this as an invitation to speak. “Do you think there are more?” he asked.

“More?” responded Qatik. “More what?”

“More like me?” said Horkai. “More like them? The ones from Granite Mountain?”

For a long time Qatik didn’t say anything, and so Horkai began to repeat the question. But before he was even halfway through, Qatik said, “Yes.”

“How many more?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik. “At least a few.”

“Do you think some have the same disease that I have?”

“Perhaps. Does it matter?”

They continued together in silence, Horkai watching the sun set in the haze, the clouds lighting up like they were bleeding. He patted his shirt, felt the cylinder still secured in the glove’s thumb.

“The ones back there,” he said after a time, “the ones in Granite Mountain, they thought they’d been saved for a reason. They thought God had chosen them.”

“Chosen them for what?” Qatik asked. “To witness the end of the world?”

“As keepers,” said Horkai. “Keepers of the human race.”

Qatik didn’t respond. They kept going. “Crazy, right?” Horkai said.