Chapter Text
We saw the stack of canned goods, and we tried to run to them. We fell in the
snow, and we got up and went on, and Benny shoved us away and went at them, and
pawed them and gummed them and gnawed at them, and he could not open them.
AM had not given us a tool to open the cans.
Benny grabbed a three quart can of guava shells, and began to batter it against
the ice bank. The ice flew and shattered, but the can was merely dented, while we
heard the laughter of a fat lady, high overhead and echoing down and down and
down the tundra. Benny went completely mad with rage. He began throwing cans, as
we all scrabbled about in the snow and ice trying to find a way to end the helpless
agony of frustration. There was no way.
Then Benny's mouth began to drool, and he flung himself on Gorrister ...
In that instant, I felt terribly calm.
Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but
death, I knew death was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way
to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that.
I had to do it quickly.
Benny was eating Gorrister's face. Gorrister on his side, thrashing snow, Benny
wrapped around him with powerful monkey legs crushing Gorrister's waist, his
hands locked around Gorrister's head like a nutcracker, and his mouth ripping at the
tender skin of Gorrister's cheek. Gorrister screamed with such jagged edged violence
that stalactites fell; they plunged down softly, erect in the receiving snowdrifts.
Spears, hundreds of them, everywhere, protruding from the snow. Benny's head
pulled back sharply, as something gave all at once, and a bleeding raw white
dripping of flesh hung from his teeth.
Ellen's face, black against the white snow, dominoes in chalk dust. Nimdok, with
no expression but eyes, all eyes. Gorrister, half conscious. Benny, now an animal. I
knew AM would let him play. Gorrister would not die, but Benny would fill his
stomach. I turned half to my right and drew a huge ice spear from the snow.
All in an instant:
I drove the great ice point ahead of me like a battering ram, braced against my
right thigh. It struck Benny on the right side, just under the rib cage, and drove
upward through his stomach and broke inside him. He pitched forward and lay still.
Gorrister lay on his back. I pulled another spear free and straddled him, still moving,
driving the spear straight down through his throat. His eyes closed as the cold
penetrated. Ellen must have realized what I had decided, even as fear gripped her.
She ran at Nimdok with a short icicle, as he screamed, and into his mouth, and the
force of her rush did the job. His head jerked sharply as if it had been nailed to the
snow crust behind him.
All in an instant.
There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation. I could hear AM draw in
his breath. His toys had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be
revived. He could keep us alive, by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He
could not bring them back.
Ellen looked at me, her ebony features stark against the snow that surrounded
There was fear and pleading in her manner, the way she held herself ready. I
knew we had only a heartbeat before AM would stop us.
It struck her and she folded toward me, bleeding from the mouth. I could not
read meaning into her expression, the pain had been too great, had contorted her
face; but it might have been thank you. It's possible. Please.
I grab yet another spear. I had to do this quickly, before AM stopped me. When I am moments from plunging the spear through my chest, into my heart, I stop. This was no time for hesitation. I steady my now shaky hands.
Without another moment of hesitation I plunge the spear right through my chest.