I, Immortal

The old G3 rifle was a leaden weight dragging at my arms as I made my way up the steep slope.

It had been an antiquated weapon well before the world ended.

I missed my M16. A more elegant weapon for a more civilized time. Less cumbersome and its ammunition lighter.

The end times, however, were anything but civilized.

The G3 was a good gun for the end times. The M16 not as much.

The first burst snapped over my head.

I threw myself down, tasted dust and dead heather, and slid behind a mound of stones left by some farmer who had been dead longer than the nation that had issued my rifle.

More bullets tore through the scrub above me. The reports were light and sharp. Five-forty-five. Kalashnikovs.

Russkis.

There had not been a Russia for decades, but some habits survived nations.

So do some soldiers.

I spat dirt and checked the rifle. Muzzle was clear, magazine seated. It had not touched the ground.

My helmet had come off again. It always did. Should have used the strap.

Another burst rattled through the brush. Suppressing fire. They knew where I had gone down, but not where I had crawled afterward.

There were nine of them left.

Ten, counting the sniper.

I had not seen him when they left the settlement before dawn. He must have joined them somewhere upriver, perhaps from one of the farms or watchposts scattered along the Gaula River.

Young and light on his feet. Patient enough to keep his distance while the others pushed me towards the ravine.

Dangerous.

The valley below was the color of old bone. Before the Fall, rain had hung over these hills for days at a time. Cold rain. Honest rain. It soaked through uniforms, filled boots, spoiled maps, and made Marines complain about Norway with great enthusiasm. Now it either didn’t rain for too long, or it rained too much too quickly.

The remains of the E6 were visible below, the asphalt cracked open by roots and partially overgrown. A rusted lorry lay across both lanes, still pointing north towards a city that no longer existed.

In the before times I had come across the ocean from America. We came in great numbers to draw equipment from caverns beneath the mountains and stop the Soviets coming south.

The Soviets came.

Then stars fell, the world broke, and what came before ceased to matter.

Movement flickered behind a spruce twenty meters ahead.

I raised the G3 and fired three deliberate shots.

The first and second rounds punched through the tree and continued on their merry voyage. You need more than a foot of wood to stop the 7.62 NATO. One of the G3’s redeeming qualities.

The third shot struck gold.

I waited.

The man behind the tree groaned.

Still alive.

Good.

I rolled left, came up in a crouch, and ran for the next patch of cover.

In combat, staying still gets you killed.

So does moving out of cover, of course.

The first shot missed.

The second struck below my right collarbone and came out through my back, taking bone and half the shoulder with it. My legs tangled beneath me.

I had just enough time to recognize the heavier crack of a Dragunov before the third round struck my face.

Then I died.

------

The first death was the worst.

The pain was bad enough, but pain eventually ends.

It was the confusion afterward that got to me.

I had felt my body break, lain there choking in a pool of my own blood, until the cold dark claimed me.

When I again drew breath, I screamed until my voice failed.

Every death after that was easier, but I’ll never forget my first.

My resurrection following the sniper’s bullet was easy. The memory of impact faded. Darkness receded as my soul drew itself back across whatever distance death had carried it.

I returned with the taste of dust in my mouth and the phantom sensation of half my face still missing.

The clouds above me had not moved much.

Five seconds, perhaps.

Ten at most.

Time behaved badly around my deaths. Analog watches stopped. Digital displays filled with impossible numbers. Once, when I still kept followers, I ordered a man to shoot me through the head while another timed my return from a safe distance.

The first resurrection took six seconds.

The second took four.

On the third attempt, the man holding the pistol refused.

I killed him later for unrelated reasons.

My shoulder was whole again. So was my face. The hole through my jacket remained, and blood had soaked into the dry ground beneath me.

Death repaired the man. It did not fix his equipment.

The sniper had not fired again. He had seen me go down. He was likely watching through his optics, waiting to see whether I still lived.

I stayed flat and closed my eyes.

The Eye came reluctantly.

Two deaths ago, it would have appeared easily. Now I had to reach deeper, past the hunger to the place inside me where divine fire still burned.

When I opened my eyes, another eye opened with them.

It hovered above my brow, a shape of pale gold and black flame. The ancient Egyptians painted it on walls, coffins, and the sides of ships. They had called it the Eye of Horus.

My son’s eye.

No, not my son.

His son.

Sometimes the memories of Osiris were difficult to separate from my own.

I looked through the Eye toward the ravine.

Stone and earth became translucent. The slope unfolded before me layer by layer until I found the sniper pressed into a hollow beneath an outcrop.

He lay well protected by rock, hidden from view by moss and bush, with the Dragunov resting quietly on its bipod.

His young heart beat hard but evenly. Excited or afraid or both, but keeping his cool.

Not good.

He was still watching me.

Also not ideal.

I assessed the situation.

He had good cover, elevation, and a clear field of fire. For my part, I could see him through the Eye. That did not mean I could conceivably hit him before he hit me. I’m a good shot, but I can’t shoot through stone.

I considered waiting until dark, but that would cost time. The man behind the spruce would bleed out. The others would regroup. Someone might go back to the settlement and bring reinforcements.

Two deaths for one wounded man was already poor arithmetic. Getting killed again would make the bargain worse still.

But the alternatives were worse.

I would have to move fast and be thorough to compensate.

I gripped the G3 as I surged to my feet.

I ran for cover, moving at an angle to make his shot as difficult as possible, changing direction every so often.

For one second, nothing happened as he struggled to comprehend my rise.

On the second, his mind accepted reality.

On the third, I began firing from the hip towards his position.

I did not expect to hit him, but hoped it would force his head down.

On the fourth, he settled behind the rifle, ignoring my fire.

Disappointing.

On the fifth, he shot me through the forehead.

Crap.

------

I came back shivering.

The cold was not in the air. It lay inside me, in the void behind the heart where the fire of the gods now burned so very low.

My limbs felt heavy. The G3 might as well have been made from lead.

Three deaths in a morning.

The sniper’s soul had better be worth the expense.

I kept my eyes closed.

Curiosity does not kill cats. People kill cats. Curiosity merely brings them close enough to twist their little necks.

He had watched my skull burst through his optics.

Then he had watched me rise and charge his position.

Then he’d killed me again.

He could not simply leave.

He needed to know whether I was truly dead. Whether he had imagined the first resurrection. Whether the thing lying below him was a man, a demon, or some malformed child of the Fall.

All I needed to do was wait.

So I waited.

He descended slowly, never taking his rifle from me.

A professional. Or what passed for one these days.

He stopped beside a lichen-covered boulder less than ten paces away.

His face was younger than his eyes. He had seen too much. We all had.

His clothes had been assembled from generations of war: old Russian camouflage trousers, Norwegian boots, a faded NATO load-bearing vest, gloves cut from some animal’s hide. A strip of red cloth had been tied around one sleeve.

The same red marked the settlement’s outer gate.

He was no more Russian than the muddy river below.

He raised the Dragunov and studied me through the sight.

I watched him through closed eyelids.

His heart accelerated when he saw that my forehead was whole.

For a moment he did nothing.

Then he whispered something in Norwegian.

The language had changed since my time. The vowels had shifted. Old words had been shortened, merged, or replaced. I understood enough.

“Gud bevar oss.”

God protect us.

The gods would do no such thing. They had troubles of their own.

I opened my eyes.

The boy fired as I rolled.

His shot went wide—sniper optics are no good against a fast-moving target at pistol-shot ranges.

I seized the G3 and came up on one knee.

He worked the action quickly.

Not quickly enough.

I fired once.

The bullet entered low in his abdomen and threw him backward against the boulder. The Dragunov clattered across the stones.

I winced at the sound. It was a good weapon, but with broken sights it was useless to me.

The boy folded around the wound, gasping.

I slotted a fresh magazine into the G3. There was no need to cock it. I always left the last round in the chamber.

The others were close. I could hear them calling to the sniper. His name sounded like Mikkel or Mikal.

The boy tried to reach for his rifle.

I kicked it away and drew the Sami knife from my belt.

The knife had been a gift from a Norwegian lieutenant before the Fall. He said it was a better fit for a country where trees, rope and frozen meat all needed cutting.

A tool, not a weapon, he had said.

The boy saw the blade and began to plead.

He tried Norwegian first. Then English.

“Please.”

His accent was strange, but the word had survived unchanged.

I knelt beside him and placed one hand against his chest.

His soul burned pale and fierce. Young, but not thin. Fear had drawn it close to the flesh. Courage held it together. He had followed a monster into the hills because people behind him depended on it.

Better than I had expected.

He tried to push me away.

I drove the knife beneath his ribs and into the beating heart.

His body arched.

Human words are ill-suited to describing the taste of a soul.

Heat. Salt. Tears. Memories. A woman singing beside a stove. A rifle pressed into small hands. Snow falling through a hole in a roof. A first kiss behind the settlement’s old fuel tanks.

The cold receded.

Not entirely.

Three deaths had cost more than the boy could repay, but he had narrowed the deficit.

The others entered the clearing.

There were eight now. The man behind the spruce had not joined them.

Several stopped when they saw me kneeling over the boy. One screamed his name. Another opened fire.

I moved before the first shot.

The bullets passed through the place where I had been. I rolled behind the boulder, came up beside the Dragunov and fired the G3 into the nearest fighter’s thigh.

He fell.

Alive.

A woman fired from behind a fallen tree. I put a round through her shoulder.

Alive.

Another man exposed himself while trying to drag her into cover. I shot him through the hip.

Alive.

The others scattered among the trees.

I could have let them run. Three wounded mortals would sustain me for a time, enough to make this expedition somewhat profitable.

But why stop now, when they had offered up their strongest?

Hunters. Guards. The settlement’s best marksmen. Men and women who had survived famine, winter, demons, and one another.

Their souls had weight.

I lowered my gun, stood, and drew breath.

The Voice was older than Egypt. Older than Ra, perhaps, though he would never have admitted it.

“Stop.”

The word crossed the clearing without sound and struck them all.

Three froze where they stood.

Two stumbled and fell to their knees.

The woman behind the tree remained upright, shaking, fighting the order with every part of herself. Blood ran down her arm. Her teeth were bared.

Strong.

She would taste the sweetest.

The others struggled against the Voice. It would not hold long. It never did, and every heartbeat drained more from me.

I raised the G3.

The first shot broke a knee.

The second struck a spine.

The third shattered an elbow and entered the ribs beneath it.

The woman tore free and fired. Her bullet struck my vest and glanced away from a metal plate beneath it.

Old American armor from a mountain depot.

Another gift from the dead.

I shot her through the stomach.

The last two broke from the Voice and ran.

I let them go.

The flame burned low again.

I needed to recover my strength.

And the settlement needed to understand what had happened here. Fear would keep them behind their walls while I decided whether to devour them all.

The clearing filled with cries.

I slung the G3 and retrieved the knife.

The man behind the spruce was dead already. His soul had already gone, leaving only cooling flesh and a dark stain on the moss.

Wasteful.

The others were still alive.

I worked carefully.

The woman was last.

She watched me approach with one hand pressed against the wound in her belly. Her hair was iron-grey, though her face was not old. A necklace of carved bone hung around her throat.

I recognized her.

She had stood on the settlement wall two nights earlier while I watched from the ruins beside the railway. She had been the one who organized the search parties after the first disappearances.

Her husband had been the large man I took near the river.

His soul had tasted of anger and woodsmoke.

She knew me too.

“You,” she said.

I crouched beside her.

“Yes.”

“Monster.”

I placed my hand against her chest and felt the soul beneath the ribs.

“You came looking for me.”

“You took them.”

“Yes.”

She spat blood into my face.

She was afraid, but the fear did not diminish her. It hardened everything around it.

A rare soul.

Nourishing.

“Why?” she asked.

Once, perhaps, I would have offered an answer. Hunger. Survival. Divine necessity. The world had changed. I had changed with it. Any of those might have satisfied a dying woman.

But they were all lies.

Monster though I might be, I was not a liar. My mother had taught me better than that.

“Because you were strong.”

I plunged the knife into her heart.

------

By afternoon, clouds had gathered over the valley.

The hunting party had carried dried meat, ammunition, and two canteens of filtered water. I took it all. Food did little for the deeper hunger, but the body still needed sustenance.

The Dragunov was in good condition, except for the broken scope.

Leaving it out in the open felt wrong, so I wrapped it in oilcloth and hid it beneath the roots of a dead pine.

I found my helmet farther downhill.

I had no use for it, but still put the old Kevlar back on.

Didn’t bother with the strap though. It chafed something terrible.

I looked down into the valley.

There would be few fighters left at the settlement now.

I could reach it before dark.

Old buildings reinforced with timber and sheet metal. They kept goats and grew barley in fenced plots beside the river. A waterwheel drove a generator when the Gaula ran high enough.

There were perhaps two hundred people behind the walls.

Most would offer little. Thin souls clinging to failing bodies. Killing them would require effort and risk for almost no return.

I looked up at the clouds again.

They were dark and swollen. It would probably rain soon. A torrent of black, acidic drops that would sting my skin and burn my eyes.

That decided the matter.

I left the settlement behind and followed the broken road south.

For weeks, travelers had carried stories from the coast.

A new lord had risen near the sea. An American officer, some said, though the old nationalities meant nothing now. He had gathered sailors, fishermen, and remnants of military units beneath his banner.

Ships moved under his protection.

Storms turned aside at his command.

Nets returned heavy with fish where other waters lay dead.

Rain fell on the fields of those who swore themselves to him.

Real rain.

Fresh water from a clean sky.

He had taken a deep-water harbor and made it live again. Settlements sent tribute in exchange for calm seas and full nets. Those who refused found their vessels broken on sudden reefs or swallowed by waves beneath cloudless skies.

Poseidon, perhaps.

Or Njord.

Some sea god or the other.

The name did not matter.

Only the essence.

A divine scion was richer than any mortal.

I had consumed my own kin before.

I still remembered the taste.

Compared with that, the people in the valley had been water.

The sea-lord would be dangerous.

But risk and profit were old companions.

I adjusted the G3 on my shoulder and continued south.