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And So It Will Never Die
People tend to settle into roles quickly. It's hardly surprising, but still, The Saint finds it satisfying: seeing people fall into place, and doing the same itself.
It first finds itself becoming something of a pack mule. Though their destination is unclear, The Saint and its compatriots the Scott siblings know that the journey will require supplies. Laden with armour and bags alike, it leads the group, a quiet presence, as foreboding as it is comforting.
The crossing of the Bastion’s border did not pose the problem it perhaps could have – with Peregrine slung over one shoulder, their frantically kicking legs held rather firmly in place, this once insurmountable task was accomplished in a matter of seconds. (Upon being unceremoniously deposited upon the floor, the younger Scott had turned to readjust their waistcoat, leaving the older just enough time to surreptitiously wipe their sibling’s stray tear from the armoured shoulder.)
Later, it becomes a courier, taking trips to the old power station to collect mushrooms or to the remains of the city in search of medical equipment. The others try to mask their relief each time it returns. The infected no longer threaten it, but the uninfected might: raiders with their weapons and their hunger, too desperate to be put off by any armour or axe. It's rare to see someone these days who doesn't bear the telltale scars of raiders' efforts. But The Saint has always been a strange sight.
It takes an odd sort of comfort in this fact. People seem much more willing to grant exceptions to humanity to those who are… exceptionally non-human. Or perhaps, just those who seem that way – all armour and scepticism and blood. And, at the very least to The Saint, nothing beside remains.
Later still, it becomes a butcher. Mars teaches it the ways of quick death and careful carving, happy to pass on the torch. The people are fed until they no longer need to be, and The Saint has a purpose. So it goes.
And go, it does. Years, as they often do, begin to fall away, and take with them the spark of life, returning only withered flowers and forgotten graves. Though none may see their wrinkled faces and greying hair reflected in their ally’s never-changing armour, they assume still one day its gait must limp as theirs does, that its mind must slow and stagnate all the same.
Neither Mars nor Peregrine live to see the fate of The Saint, but this does not trouble them as it may. For two so scarred by loss and grief, a sanctity was granted by this unholy companion that they’d truly believed they would never feel again.
And, in the end, they died with utmost faith that their Saint would not do the same.
The Second Fall of Din Talin
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
The streets of this city are familiar to you, even if you do not remember them. Grey-whiskered and old-jointed, you march these same streets you had marched every day prior to civilisation’s carrion-cough.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
You kneel in the summer heat. This building is the first. You have been here before. You will be here again. There is a dry wooden table, upon which you lay a dry paper map. It is folded twice, into quarters, and has clearly been broken, once, down the middle, and carefully repaired with soft-bound twine. The agonisingly tender fashion in which you hold it - and the fashion in which its cartographer’s signature has been re-inked - suggests something about the current state of whomever might have drawn it.
It is a complete district-to-district map of Din Talin. The point you currently occupy is the building you have marked, in the fourteenth district, that is furthest from the direct center of Din Talin.
It will be a long task, you think. Especially when they are avoiding you.
It will be one long task in a list of long tasks that does not have an end, because you do not have an end either.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
You step quietly, and the oiled joints inside your carapace do not creak. The shambling mass of unthinking flesh has been corralled, perfectly, standardly, into the middle of the road. There is one benefit to the vaccine, beyond the threat of infection leaving you; and that is that the infected can be safely made to walk in one direction if you walk at them from the same direction.
It is also convenient that they seem to want to look at you whilst they’re doing this, as it makes it a lot easier to shoot them. You can see the whites of their eyes. Much calmer.
After this, it is only a matter of rounding up the remaining few whom linger in buildings and cars, and laying out the corpses, and beginning the tally.
By the third week, you have carved scoremarks into your gauntlet thrice-over. You do not much care about destroying old marks, of course: you remember them. And this is for you, not anyone else.
The fourteenth district is empty. No fauna move in and amongst its concrete streets. The food chain, as it were, has been righted. The only thing that still disturbs the entropy is a kevlar automaton tramping through the moss, pouring soft gasoline over mulched bodies, and igniting it with a kind, gentle flame.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
And into the next one.
The twelfth district is where a river flows into the city. This river once flowed thick and grey, but now its clarid base is visible in its mossy, stony equity. There have been no feet to disturb its bed and lift its silt in many decades. When the Saint tramps through it, the river glimmers with lighted water-dust crawling through its bends and estuaries, and for a few hours, that tendrilous snake slithers through Din Talin one last time.
No blood ever touches the water. It has learned the danger of this. Smoke cloaks the sky for a few days. The district is emptied. The march continues.
There is a moment where the Saint’s gun, once more, points at the face of another living human.
A scrappy young thing, corrugated shards adorning his shoulders and his chest, his hair matted, his eyes wide. His hands wrap throat-tight around the grip of his revolver, and his gaze, thin-pupilled and trembling-jawed, pours into the empty black void of the Saint’s eye-slit.
They are indoors. It is a dusty, squat old building, two floors, broken windows, wet floor. Only one of them is breathing.
His face reminds it of…
…The Saint could add him to the pile. No matter how many shots he looses, he will not be able to disable it before it can render him unmoving and dead.
There is silence. There are no witnesses.
The boy pulls the trigger, and the bullet squarely impacts one of the Saint’s horns. A woody crunch, and it shatters.
There is silence, again.
The Saint lessens its grip on the trigger. It tilts its head to the door.
“Go.”
The young man blinks, incredulous. His breathing slows. He blinks.
And he lowers his gun. Quickly, eyes still darting back, he exits the building.
The Saint waits for about four seconds. Once it is sure that it can no longer see his face, it moves its arm, delicately, intricately, and fires.
One more body for the bonfire.
It feels nothing.
It would not be correct to say that this task takes years. It is several tasks, subdivided over the course of months at a time, room by room, building by building, district by district.
The skyscrapers in the center of the city take the longest. It is months for each building. Each dawn, wake. Each morning, eat. Each midday, herd. Each evening, kill. Each night, burn. Repeat. The smoke stains the sky. The streets do not move. Wind chimes ring in abandoned windows, and the river flows clear and siltless.
The final month is one last walk through of the abandoned city. It is, at long last, empty. Truly empty. A vacuity of all humanity, both man and zombie.
It is the End of Din Talin.
The Saint sits atop the tallest skyscraper, in the most populous district, in the deepest winter, and, permitting itself one moment of frivolity, dangles its feet off the edge of the tower.
It looks down into the snow. It falls like ash from a pyre. It looks up into the sky. There are no clouds. Nothing moves besides the snow.
The Saint’s body is old. It is tired, from this great task. There is always more to do. The tree in the Bastion’s leaves are dusted white. The scaffolds of the Sanctuary’s towers keel and twist with age. In a distant plot of land, two graves each bearing the same last name sit, grass long-since grown over their mulched casket-grasp.
There will be no third grave. It does not mind.
It closes its eyes, and it leans back against the wall behind it. Its axe is propped against its shoulder. Its gun is laid upon its lap.
Dawn. Morning. Midday. Evening. Night.
It is night.
The Saint falls asleep, its heart steady, its hands warm.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
And it does not wake again.1)