I HATE YOUR LOVE OF KILLING

1563 4D

In gathering daylight, Linas, a young, nervous, thin man in militia blue, surveyed the smoldering wreckage of the house as the other eleven members of his unit poked through ashes and debris. The heat from the still-burning barn lit their faces red-brown under lifted visors.

Tannerye, a grim-looking, grizzle-bearded officer from the west outland, his collechi cicatrix pulsating red on a dark forearm, came and stood beside him. “Those were just old women, Linas. Why would they take flesh from dead people?” His voice, reedy and nasal, cut through the sounds of the fire. A small dog barked and howled from the yard nearby.

Linas stared at the two charred bodies. The fire had flashed over the wooden building so quickly that the remains still looked nearly whole. “Out here, I don’t know. They steal flesh down in the City, deep down,” Linas said, and he shuddered. “I knew a guy they found half-eaten. They thought it was a cult or something.” He worked one finger up under his helm‘s left earpiece and scratched. They’d shut off helm audio; no need for combat info on something like this.

“What did you think it was?” The two men approached the bodies.

Linas' neck stiffened at the smell. “I don’t know. In the City, there’s kids and gangs all over. The kids kill people and strip ‘em. Sometimes they… they’re hungry. Damn it, that shouldn’t be.” Linas put his fist to his mouth. The roof ridge of the barn collapsed, raising a pre-dawn flare of sparks. A voice rose from the barn, an unending wail that rose and fell like sea-waves, unhuman and relentless. An alarm.

“There’s an autocart in there,” the officer called out. “It’s gonna blow! Get everybody back. Back!” He waved his arm wildly at the others. “Get back! Get down!”

The voice rose into a scream, now seeming more human than anything Linas had ever heard, tormented and violent. He bellied to the ash-covered dirt and shuddered; the scream terminated in a thunderous blast that sent meteors of flame in all directions from the fire-devoured barn. He picked himself up and saw little fires flickering in spots all around a bare, still-burning foundation.

“Nobody should eat other people.” The officer thrust his chin out as he spoke, and flicked some embers from his left shoulder.

“They’re just kids, down there. They shouldn’t have to.”

“You think that’ll change?” The older man rubbed his forearm scar vigorously. “You think any of this is gonna change? Don’t spend time thinking about it. It’s enough just to hang on to what you have. Maybe these two were hungry. Infobase says they came from the City.”

“No, look around. They had a full store here, and good crops. See? This is fruit preserves.” Linas kicked at some metal containers ruptured by the heat. “And look, there’s flour here. Why would they…?”

“Yeah, I see. Come on, we’ve got a report to do.” They turned away to the others. “Let’s go, people.”

“Killers.” A voice, harsh and low, came from behind them. They whirled, fumbling for their guns. One of the bodies now sat upright. The eye sockets, dry pits, faced them. From a lipless mouth, words came, indistinct as if voiced from another mouth deep inside. “You kill and kill. All of you.” Too low for a voice, almost a belch, in a near-monotone.

“What in sky and earth is that?” Linas aimed his beam gun at the corpse sitting, swaying, in front of him. The other men and women gathered, weapons ready, watching.

“No, wait.” The officer stepped forward. “Just watch it and see what it does. Start up your cam.” Linas strobed his eyes; a confirming click came as his archive recorder activated, feeding his eyesight and hearing into the helm‘s memory.

The voice had not waited for them. “Even the best of you loves death. It’s your drug. Killing soothes you. You protect yourselves with killing, you show your love by killing, you teach your children killing. And at night, you silence the voices of your dead by killing again.” The voice became clearer and stronger. The head, hairless and blistered, turned slightly to face each of the two men as it spoke with unmoving open lips.

“What are you?” Linas asked. Food from his stomach rose uncontrollably into his throat. He swallowed, wincing. Maybe this was a demon, like the asharan of the colls. His hands tightened on his gun.

The voice ignored him, speaking through his words. Clear fluid spurted from what had been the woman’s mouth, glistening over white teeth and black char, and ran down the pitted, heaving chest. The voice bubbled. “Ages ago your kind were the same. I watched your blood flow down gutters and through floors. You butchered, burned and buried millions of your own, and then you raised monuments to the dead. Your monuments fell, but you haven’t changed. Death has a purpose among animals, but not among you. You’ve already killed the precious life that began here.”

“Must be some bio stunt, like those puppet-growers make in the City,” a militia woman said.

“Think we can make it stand up?” a man asked. He tried to laugh.

“It’s still talking.” Linas, fascinated, drew a little closer to hear the voice.

“You forget. Your City names — Sobi, Naga, Shinj, Babiar, Salvo — are names of death from your home world, many thousands of years old: Sobibor, Nagasaki, Shinjian, Babi Yar, Salvador. Pyres of forgotten innocents.” The sitting figure trembled, shaking free from its shoulders the epaulets of shriveled skin. “I was there.”

“Shut it off.” A voice from the group of militia, now drawn together to stare.

“No,” Linas said. He gripped his gun and drew within a step of the figure’s feet. A crop storage shed, now only charcoal, collapsed to the ground, sending out a wave of heat and ashes that seared eyes and scorched hair.

“These names were once memorials to the dead,” the voice continued, choking softly. “Now you kill each other over them.”

“Enough of that.” Tannerye raised his gun. Others muttered behind him.

“Wait.” Linas reached back and stopped him with a hand on the barrel. “Who are you? What is your name?” he asked the figure as it kept talking, not responding to them.

“I came here to live, not to die. To heal, not to destroy,” the voice continued. It weakened, gurgling. “To share life, that is my desire. This was a woman named Deen. The other one was Marra. They shared life, and they were happy. They healed your wounded and dying. And they loved. They only killed to feed us. But even then I felt their joy leap up when they did it. Joy in making death.”

The voice had dropped into a strangled whisper through thickening liquid. “I hate your love of killing. Wanton and boundless. I leave you now.” The body fell back flat on the scorched floor; warm ichor oozing from its throat steamed under the chill dawn sky. Tannerye and Linas came and stood over it. Tannerye turned the body over with his foot; it flopped onto its belly, flakes of soot and char falling from it. A small ring of moisture glistened around a hole torn in the blistered wooden floor.

Tannerye said to Linas, “Let’s leave this part out of the report. Chim doesn’t have a sense of humor. He’ll think we’ve seen asharan or worse, and send us to Reloc North. But keep it and file it if you can, and don’t tell him.” His hands shook as he holstered his beam gun. The other militia moved back to the vans to climb in.

Linas shut off his recorder reluctantly. “Yes, sir. All right.” Tannerye kicked at a few broken bottles, making a clinking sound over the crackling from the remains of the barn, and then walked away. Linas closed his eyes for a moment. His stomach churned. I don’t know what or who you were, but I won’t forget. He went to the dog. It stood and growled but didn’t move. “Go on, get going, little guy.” The dog growled some more, then circled to where the bodies lay. As the two men left, he sniffed and howled.