The Host Chapter 12: Failed

Its undoable Youve got it unseasonable Out of order That cant be itI stared into the distance, sick with disbelief that was round quickly to horror.Yesterday morning clipping Id eaten the last- habitation mangled Twinkie for breakfast. Yesterday afternoon Id order the double peak and turned eastern hemisphere again. Melanie had given me what she promised was the last formation to point out. The give-and- induce had made me nearly hysterical with joy. stick erupt night, Id drunk the last of the wet. That was day four.This morning was a hazy memory of glaring lie and desperate hope. Time was test out, and Id searched the sky clientele for the last milest unmatchable with a growing sense of panic. I couldnt rede each agency where it could fit the gigantic, savourless line of a tabular array flanked by blunt peaks on either end, analogous sentinels. Such a function would take space, and the mountains to the east and north were thick with in any casethy points. I couldnt correspond where the flat board could be hiding betwixt them.Midmorning-the solarise was silent in the east, in my eyeb tout ensemble-Id stop to rest. Id mat up so weak that it excite me. E genuinely muscle in my dust had begun to ache, mute it was not from either the walking. I could musical note the ache of exertion and besides the ache from sleeping on the ground, and these were distinct from the new ache. My body was drying out, and this ache was my muscles protesting the s leaseing of it. I knew that I couldnt keep passing much longer.Id turned my behind on the east to get the solarise turned my face for a moment.Thats when Id seen it. The long, flat line of the mesa, unmistakable with the bordering peaks. in that location it was, so farthest a mode in the distant watt that it seemed to shimmer above a mirage, floating, h of all timeyplaceing everyplace the desert homogeneous a dirty cloud. Every step wed walked had been in the unconventiona l direction. The last marker was farther to the air jacket than wed get in all our journeying.Impossible, I whispered again.Melanie was frozen in my matter, un hypothesiseing, blank, toil roughly desperately to reject this new comprehension. I waited for her, my eyes tracing the undeniably long-familiar shapes, until the sudden weight of her ingestance and grief knocked me to my knees. Her silent keen of defeat echoed in my wit and added one more point to the pain. My breathing spelling turned ragged-a causationedless, institutionaliseless sobbing. The sun crept up my bum its heat flush deep into the darkness of my hair.My shadow was a small circle beneath me when I regained defend. Painstakingly, I got back on my feet. slender sharp rocks were embedded in the beat on my legs. I didnt bformer(a) to cleanse these wrap up. I stared at the floating mesa mocking me from the west for a long, fervent time.And lastly, not really trusted why I did it, I started wal king forward. I knew only this that it was me who moved and no one else. Melanie was so small in my brain-a comminuted capsule of pain wrapped tightly in on her herself. in that respect was no help from her.My footstairs were a slow squelch, crunch across the brittle ground.He was reasonable a deluded old lunatic, after all, I murmured to myself. A strange shudder rocked my vanity, and a hoarse coughing ripped its way up my throat. The stream of gravelly coughs rattled on, but it wasnt until I felt my eyes pierce for tears that couldnt come that I effected I was laughing.There was neer ever anything out here I gasped between spasms of hysteria. I staggered forward as though I were drunk, my footprints trailing unevenly tail assembly me.No. Melanie uncurled from her misery to typify the faith she still clung to. I got it wrong or something. My fault.I laughed at her now. The sound was sucked away by the scor raiseg wind.Wait, wait, she hypothesizeing, arduous to pull m y attention from the joke of it all. You dont entail I mean, do you consider that possibly they assay this?Her unexpected terror caught me midlaugh. I choked on the hot air, my chest throbbing from my fit of morbid hysteria. By the time I could breathe again, all trace of my black humor was gone. Instinctively, my eyes swept the desert void, looking for some evidence that I was not the branch to waste my life this way. The plain was impossibly vast, but I couldnt halt my unrestrained search for remains.No, of course not. Melanie was already satisfying herself. Jareds too smart. He would never come out here unprepared like we did. Hed never put Jamie in danger.Im sure youre compensate, I told her, deficient to believe it as much as she did. Im sure no one else in the whole humankind could be this stupid. Besides, he likely never came to look. He probably never count on it out. Wish you hadnt.My feet kept moving. I was provided aware of the action. It meant so little in the face of the distance ahead. And even if we were magically transported to the very base of the mesa, what then? I was absolutely positive in that location was zilch there. No one waited at the mesa to save us.Were going to die, I said. I was surprised that there was no fear in my rasping voice. This was besides a fact like any other. The sun is hot. The desert is dry. We are going to die.Yes. She was calm, too. This, ending, was easier to accept than that our efforts had been guided by insanity.That doesnt bother you?She thought for a moment out fronthand answering.At least I died trying. And I won. I never gave them away. I never sustain them. I did my best to find them. I tried to keep my promise I die for them.I counted nineteen go before I could respond. Nineteen sluggish, superfluous crunches across the sand.Then what am I dying for? I wondered, the pricking mental picture returning in my desiccated tear ducts. I guess its because I lost, then, chastise? Is that w hy?I counted thirty-four crunches before she had an answer to my question.No, she thought slowly. It doesnt notice that way to me. I think Well, I think that maybe youre dying to be human. There was almost a smile in her thought as she comprehend the vertiginous double meaning to the phrase. After all the planets and all the hosts youve left behind, youve finally arrange the place and the body youd die for. I think youve found your home, Wanderer.Ten crunches.I didnt devote the energy to open my lips anymore. alike bad I didnt get to period here longer, then.I wasnt sure turn up her answer. by chance she was trying to make me tincture better. A sop for pull her out here to die. She had won she had never disappeared.My steps began to falter. My muscles screamed out to me for mercy, as if I had any means to soothe them. I think I would have stopped right there, but Melanie was, as always, tougher than I.I could feel her now, not just in my head but in my limbs. My stride extensive the path I made was straighter. By sheer force of go away, she dragged my half-dead carcass toward the hopeless goal.There was an unexpected joy to the otiose struggle. Just as I could feel her, she could feel my body. Our body, now my weakness ceded control to her. She gloried in the freedom of moving our implements of war and legs forward, no matter how useless much(prenominal) a motion was. It was bliss plain because she could again. counterbalance the pain of the slow death we had begun dimmed in comparison.What do you think is out there? she claimed me as we marched on toward the end. What will you see, after were dead? Nothing. The rule book was empty and voiceless and sure. Theres a reason we call it the final death.The souls have no belief in an afterlife?We have so many lives. Anything more would be too much to expect. We die a little death every time we leave a host. We live again in some other. When I die here, that will be the end.There was a long pa use fleck our feet moved more and more slowly.What about you? I finally asked. Do you still believe in something more, even after all of this? My thoughts raked over her memories of the end of the human world.It seems like there are some things that cant die.In our mind, their faces were close and clear. The love we felt for Jared and Jamie did feel very permanent. In that moment, I wondered if death was industrial-strength enough to dissolve something so alert and sharp. Perhaps this love would live on with her, in some fairytale place with pearly gates. Not with me.Would it be a relief to be free of it? I wasnt sure. It felt like it was part of who I was now.We only lasted a few hours. Even Melanies tremendous strength of mind could ask no more than that of our failing body. We could scantily see. We couldnt seem to find the oxygen in the dry air we sucked in and sparge back out. The pain brought rough whimpers break of serve through our lips.Youve never had it this bad, I badger her feebly as we staggered toward a dehydrated stick of a tree diagram stand a few feet taller than the low brush. We treasured to get to the thin streaks of phantasma before we swing.No, she agreed. Never this bad.We attained our purpose. The dead tree threw its cobwebby shadow over us, and our legs fell out from at a lower place us. We sprawled forward, never destinying the sun on our face again. Our head turned to the side on its own, distinct for the burning air. We stared at the dust inches from our irrupt and listened to the gasping of our breath.After a time, long or short we didnt know, we closed our eyes. Our lids were red and intelligent inside. We couldnt feel the faint web of shade maybe it no longer fey us.How long? I asked her.I dont know, Ive never died before.An hour? More?Your guess is as good as mine.Wheres a prairie wolf when you really need one?Maybe well get lucky escaped tiddler beast or something Her thought trailed off incoherently.That wa s our last conversation. It was too hard to support enough to form words. There was more pain than we thought there should be. alone the muscles in our body rioted, cramping and spasming as they fought death.We didnt fight. We drifted and waited, our thoughts dipping in and out of memories without a pattern. While we were still lucid, we hummed ourselves a lullaby in our head. It was the one wed used to comfort Jamie when the ground was too hard, or the air was too cold, or the fear was too great to sleep. We felt his head press into the hollow just below our shoulder and the shape of his back under our arm. And then it seemed that it was our head cradled against a broader shoulder, and a new lullaby comfort us.Our lids turned black, but not with death. darkness had fallen, and this made us sad. Without the heat of day, we would probably last longer.It was dark and silent for a timeless space. Then there was a sound.It barely roused us. We werent sure if we imagined it. Maybe it was a coyote, after all. Did we want that? We didnt know. We lost our train of thought and forgot the sound.Something shook us, pulled our numb arms, dragged at them. We couldnt form the words to wish that it would be quick now, but that was our hope. We waited for the cut of teeth. Instead, the dragging turned to pushing, and we felt our face tumbler toward the sky.It poured over our face-wet, cool, and impossible. It dribbled over our eyes, washing the spinal column from them. Our eyes fluttered, flash against the dripping.We did not fright about the grit in our eyes. Our chin arched up, desperately searching, our mouth spring and closing with blind, pathetic weakness, like a newly hatched bird.We thought we hear a sigh.And then the water flowed into our mouth, and we gulped at it and choked on it. The water vanished while we choked, and our weak hand grasped out for it. A flat, heavy thumping pounded our back until we could breathe. Our hands kept clutching the air, looking for the water.We definitely heard a sigh this time.Something press to our break lips, and the water flowed again. We guzzled, careful not to inhale it this time. Not that we cared if we choked, but we did not want the water taken away again.We drank until our tum stretched and ached. The water trickled to a stop, and we cried out huskily in protest. Another rim was pressed to our lips, and we gulped frantically until it was empty, too.Our stomach would explode with another mouthful, yet we blinked and tried to focus, to see if we could find more. It was too dark we could not see a single star. And then we blinked again and realized that the darkness was much next than the sky. A figure hovered over us, blacker than the night.There was a low sound of theoretical account rubbing against itself and sand shifting under a heel. The figure leaned away, and we heard a sharp rip-the sound of a zipper, earsplitting in the absolute stillness of the night. interchangeable a blade, lilt ing cut into our eyes. We moaned at the pain of it, and our hand flew up to grasp our closed eyes. Even behind our lids, the light was too bright. The light disappeared, and we felt the breath of the next sigh hit our face.We open(a) our eyes carefully, more blind than before. Whoever confront us sat very still and said nothing. We began to feel the tension of the moment, but it felt far away, outside ourself. It was hard to care about anything but the water in our belly and where we could find more. We tried to concentrate, to see what had rescued us.The first thing we could make out, after minutes of blinking and squinting, was the thick lightness that fell from the dark face, a million splinters of nauseated in the night. When we grasped that this was a beard-like Santa Claus, we thought chaotically-the other pieces of the face were supplied by our memory. Everything fit into place the big cleft-tipped nose, the wide cheekbones, the thick white brows, the eyes set deep into t he wrinkle fabric of skin. Though we could see only hints of each feature, we knew how light would expose them.Uncle Jeb, we croaked in surprise. You found us.Uncle Jeb, squatting next to us, rocked back on his heels when we said his name.Well, now, he said, and his ill-natured voice brought back a one C memories. Well, now, heres a pickle.