Piers Anthony - Rings of Ice

Slowly the sight and sound faded. Zena’s attention returned to things nearby. “Your glasses!” she cried.

Thatch held them up. The lenses had been shattered.

“Can you see without them?” she asked.

He nodded. “Well enough—close range. You are beautiful.”

“That’s well enough,” she said. Why this coy banter, amidst the most grisly business of butchering a friend? Was she losing her grip on reality?

They returned to work. The head jerked and rolled with the force of cutting. It felt like a living thing, struggling to get free. Zena vomited into the storm, but did not relinquish her hold. It had to be done.

After an interminable time the head came away. Zena lifted it by the hair and forced herself to look. It was no longer Karen, but the mask of a stranger, severed at the neck. Still, she knew that some of the water streaming down her face was tears. If only there had been some other way…

Zena wrapped it carefully in the sheet and set it on the step of the bus, just inside the door. “We’d better do the rest now,” she said. “While I’m still heaved out.”

They removed Karen’s clothing and Thatch took up the knife again. But the blade trembled. “I can’t carve a woman!” he said miserably.

Zena looked down at the headless corpse and saw what he meant. The head had been a necessary thing, and he had done that before. Now a beautifully feminine torso was exposed. Only a certain type of man would be able to mutilate those attributes, and Thatch was not that type.

Gus normally bullied Thatch into finding a way. Zena was not going to do that; she wanted such bullying to stop. “I’ll start it,” she said. She knew that once the body had been defeminized, Thatch would be able to continue. He would have to, because Zena lacked the physical strength to sever the bones and tissues of that body.

She took the knife. It was glistening and clean, for the rain scoured it constantly. She gritted her teeth and made an incision. The blade was sharp, and it was like cutting meat—unsurprisingly. Then she retched again, her stomach knotting. But there was no escape in sickness; this job, like every job since the first rain started, had to be done.

She carved. Through much of it her eyes were closed, but she kept going.

When she was done she turned the blade over to Thatch.

She saw a discoloration on his teeth and knew that he too had been puking. She reached out to catch his hand, touched by this first sign of genuine weakness in him. She brought it to her lips for a wet kiss.

Then they both leaned over the body from opposite sides and kissed each other on the lips. It was the first time, for even in the sexual embrace she had always turned her face away. It was unutterably sweet.

There was no refuge from the horror of Karen’s demise but love. With love they could continue. Zena knew that this feeling, so long and hard in coming, would never depart.

Zena held while Thatch carved. It was a long, difficult, awful job—but her spirit glowed with that transcendent emotion, and time was nothing. She loved Thatch—and through him Floy, and even Gus, and Karen and Gordon, and Dust Devil and Foundling… and herself. Love.

At last they were done, all but the smoking of the new meat. They reentered the bus, to find Floy and Gus recovered. Zena kissed Floy, then Gus, and returned to Thatch, and nothing needed to be said.

“Do you think Karen’s spirit is with Gordon now?” Floy asked.

Zena had to set aside her own returned misery while she considered the ramifications of the question. What would be the right answer? “Karen was a good woman,” she said. “A brave, good woman. Gordon was a good man, and he has been alone long enough. It is only right that they be together. They have to do what is best in their life, just as we must in ours.”

“That’s beautiful,” Floy said. “I am not jealous now.”

Then, as once before, they were hugging each other, expressing in tears the emotions that could not be properly conveyed in words.

Now they were four, and the two animals. Thatch continued to forage for edible moss, and Zena carved and cooked the meat in small portions. The rain went on, and the noise and motion of the volcano.

At five months of the Mindel deluge, something under the bus collapsed. They tumbled out of bed, alarmed. Zena, seven months pregnant, clung to the furniture while Thatch leaped down the steps to check outside.

“Foundation’s gone!” he yelled. “The whole area’s been undermined. The bus is falling into a sink hole! The next ’quake will—”

“We’ve got to get out!” Zena cried. “If we get stuck in an underground cavity, we’ll never survive the rain!” She had thought the worst was over when Karen died; now she knew that none of them had any guarantee of survival.

“It can go any time,” Thatch said. “Jam everything you can into the packs and get out in a minute or two! I know where we can find temporary shelter.”

Zena packed feverishly. She didn’t bother with clothing, but concentrated on useful items: the knives, tools, rope and remaining smoked meat. She tossed the first pack out to Thatch, and worked on another. Floy made a quick, clumsy search of the closets and cupboards, pointing out the essentials. Gus just stared.

“Okay—out!” Zena cried, leading the way. The bus shifted again, terrifying her as it added emphasis to the directive.

“I can’t!” Gus cried.

Floy showed him her claws. “Move!” she yelled.

She herded him like a frightened stallion, forcing him to the steps and down. Gus screamed as the rain struck him—but fear of the little beast behind him forced him on. They scrabbled out of the depression the bus was in following Thatch in a circuitous but secure route. Dust Devil hated the rain almost as much as Gus did, but bounded after Foundling on a parallel route.

Once clear of the bus they stopped to link up with the rope. Thatch took the lead, with Zena second; then Gus, and Floy right behind him. Gus’s eyes were tightly closed; only the tug of the rope and Floy’s screeched directions got him moving in the right direction. They forged on through the torrent, a motley party.

Thatch guided them to a rocky overhang. The water had undercut it, then changed course; now the stone offered partial shelter. “This is solid,” Thatch said. “And there’re several routes away from it.”

Gus huddled against the stone wall, taking no other interest in survival.

“There are still trees and rocks,” Floy said. “We’ll have to build our own shelter, here. And a covered fireplace, so we can cook. Gus and I will fetch in rocks; can’t have Zena lifting too much.”

Zena was angry at the girl’s assumptions, but realized after a moment that she was witnessing a promising phenomenon. The clumsy child, so recently become an effective woman, was now stepping into the leadership breach. Zena was unable to do that, especially in her present condition, and Thatch was not the type. Gus was a loss. If Floy could do it, why protest?

But could Floy do it? Gus seemed to be a lost cause.

“Come on, Gus,” Floy said. “You have more muscles than any of us; show us what you can carry.”

Gus did not move. Exposure to the storm had completely inactivated him.

Floy went to kneel beside him. “Now I’m going to show you three things,” she said gently. “First, the intellectual: we need your help, because Zena’s getting near baby-time, and Thatch has to forage where only he can go, and I just don’t have the ability to pick up a big slippery rock and move it. If you don’t pitch in, it won’t get done—and we’ll never get out of this rain, and we’ll die here like Gordon and Karen, and have to eat each other, one by one, and you’ll be the last to go, and you’ll be alone in the rain.”