Page 40 of Fable for the End of the World

There’s the low sound of leaves rustling, something moving among the trees just beyond the clearing. The Lamb’s hold on me loosens, as if she’s thinking of dropping me to the ground and just running. I wouldn’t blame her. But then it tightens again. I’m amazed by how warm she is, still—the heat of her body bleeding through my damp hunting suit.

“They’re coming,” she whispers hoarsely.

With all the strength I can muster, I jerk the rifle up, bracing iton my shoulder. I need my other arm to steady it. So I slide myself free of the Lamb and hold the gun aloft. My knees tremble. My vision darkens at the corners.

But then the Lamb’s arms are braced around my waist. She holds me upright, hunching down so my upper body has free range of motion. We both tense. I can’t help but resist it, her touch. I can feel her pulse against my thigh, beating in time with her tracker and with my own heart.

I don’t want to feel it—any of it. I don’t want any reminders that she’s human or that I’m going to be the one to make her heartbeat stop.

The Lamb’s fingers curl, nails digging into my hunting suit. I know I disgust her, the frigid, half-human creature that I am.

To us you seem like machines.

The rot smell grows stronger until it has a weight, the air growing thick and close. I shudder, and the rifle shudders with me, my eye briefly losing the scope. I pretend that I’m back at the shooting range, nothing but silicone torsos staring emptily back at me, Azrael watching from behind the two-way glass.

But the thing that bursts into the clearing is anything but lifeless. It’s a snarling mass of mottled gray skin and flailing limbs. It snarls, guttural and rasping, a sound no human could make.

It’s a good thing my first instinct is always to shoot. I pull the trigger and within an instant, the creature crumples. There’s only a high-pitched whine as it dies, scrabbling pitifully at the mud and the leaf pulp.

The Lamb lets out a breath. I feel her shoulders slump, but hergrip on my waist is still tight.

In the silence, I peer at the creature. In death, it’s easier to see how it resembles a human: the same-shaped limbs, covered in a waxy gray skin, bones pushing tautly through. The face, still mostly recognizable, though transfigured by a grimace of pain.

But when I look closer, I see the little things that are off. Wrong. It has too many fingers on its left hand. There’s a pale webbing of flesh between them, delicate and translucent. Along the side of its neck is a faint patterning of scales, shimmering even in the weak light.

“What is it?” I ask, repulsed.

“A Wend.” The Lamb inches slightly closer to me. Her cheek is a breath away from my rib cage. “Some people try to live off the grid—the Caerus grid. So they go into the woods and they start eating the mutations. It changes them. Their appearance. Their... appetites.”

I stare down at the slumped pile of bones and rotted skin. “Mutations?”

“Yeah.” She blinks up at me. “You know, the deer with webbed feet or third eyes. The birds with scaled wings. They’re everywhere. They outcompete the ordinary animals. That’s what Luka and I do in our shop. We hunt the ordinary animals and stuff them, so they’ll be preserved, even when they go extinct in the wild.”

“I’ve never seen them before.”

“Really?” Her mouth hangs open, just slightly.

“They’re not roaming the streets of the City, if that’s what you mean.”

“No.” A flush tints her cheeks, illuminating a subtle scattering of freckles. “I just figured—on your... hunts.”

I press my lips shut. I’m not going to confess that I’ve never been on a Gauntlet that lasted so long or took me so far into the unmarked wilds of the outlying Counties. I never expected an Outlier to make me feel naive, unworldly. But I feel an odd and unaccountable pull of curiosity.

I want her to keep talking.

But neither of us gets the chance to say more. All of a sudden, the clearing is flooded. Wends are lurching through the brush, grasping and growling. Some of them crawl on all fours, their spines arched like cats. Revulsion climbs from my stomach to my throat, more powerful than even fear. It’s the revulsion that moves my rifle, sends bullets sliding cleanly through the barrel and burying themselves in the Wends’ mangled bodies.

One in the throat. Another in the temple. These are killing places, sites of instant death. A feeling of calm overtakes me as I shoot, banishing the nausea and the cold sweat of withdrawal. This is what I was made for.

Blood, more black than red, splatters the earth. A numbing silence clouds my senses, like cotton crowding my ears, insulating me from the smell of decay and the sounds of choking and howling.

Something pierces through the silence. A very human cry.

One of the Wends has survived. It’s grasping at the hem of the Lamb’s jacket, yanking her down and dragging her across the forest floor. She thrashes and kicks as it sinks its sharpened nails into her thigh. Clambering up her body like a vine on a tree.

Her eyes are flung open in horror as its foaming mouth hovers above her throat.

My gunshot cracks the air.

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