Piers Anthony - Chthon

Vaguely he heard scuffling and splashing around him. Something was going on, but he was afraid to sit up and look, afraid to leave the water because of an irrational fear that he would burst into flame the moment he did so.

But he had to. He was finding it difficult to breathe for some reason. There was an obstruction.

Aton sat up and put his hand to his mouth to find it slimed with a thick layer of putrid paste. Inside, this time, obscuring nasal and glottal passages, instead of external skin. His nose was already entirely blocked. He hooked one finger into his mouth and scraped out a wad of yellow mucus, rank and rotten, which hardened immediately upon exposure to the air. No wonder his breathing was difficult. The stuff clogged the breathing passages by solidifying around them.

He looked around, or tried to, and discovered that a similar pus rimmed his eyes, almost closing them. It was the same for the others, male and female alike; the illness no longer seemed to distinguish between the sexes. Some were already retching, nauseated by the deposits. One man yanked out a huge solid chunk, and there was blood on it from the adhering membrane. No one dared to let it collect, or the choice would be between mutilation and suffocation. And still the fever raged.

Aton buried his face in the water, trying to wash the matter away. This helped; the lumps dissolved. He spat out a thick stew, gagging anew at the stench, and rinsed again. Water had saved him a second time.

The others followed his example. For three it was already too late. Several more were in doubt and would probably suffocate shortly. No one had time to assist his neighbor. There seemed to be no defense against the attack—only a temporary abridgment of the symptoms by continuous rinsing.

The pool had been fouled. “Move on—a little,” Bossman said.

They moved on, just far enough to locate a clear pool. The short walk was immensely tiring. The illness had sapped the strength of all of them drastically.

It continued for an interminable time. Toward the end most were crawling from one pool to the next between sieges, unable to walk upright. Judging by the state of his hunger, Aton estimated that the actual time elapsed since the onset was less than two marches—but subjectively, it was many times that.

The first recoveries came. The women, earliest to succumb, led the way to equilibrium. Gradually the symptoms abated for all of them.

Eleven women and three men survived. Of these, three continued in distress: Aton, Bossman, and the black-haired woman. Aton saw this, realized something, then lost the thought as he fought back another surge of dizziness and nausea.

Recovery: but those who had recovered completely, at least so far as the visible symptoms went, were not helping the others. They merely stood there, lethargic, waiting—for something. They did not speak.

At length the remaining three relaxed and sat up, free of the fever. The standing eleven looked on, blank-faced.

“All right,” Bossman called, his voice of command a shadow of its past. “We got to move on nex’ pool.”

He set the example, but the larger group did not follow.

“What’s the matter with them?” the black-haired one asked.

“Aren’t you coming?” Aton called back to them.

No answer.

“You know what?” the woman said. “They act like zombies.”

It was the key. The standing people did not appear to have free will at all. All of them were known to Aton, after the rigors of the trek. While they were not noted individualists, they still should—

His previous thought blossomed. Individualism: only the three most independent members of the remaining party were in motion now. The ones who always spoke for themselves, who acted on their own motivation, who habitually demanded explanations.

Further conjecture was cut off by another onset of the disease. All three staggered to the next pool and tumbled in, battling both fever and mucus with the cool water. And the others watched stolidly and did nothing.

In his fevered imagination it seemed to Aton that he was losing control over his own body. His arms responded slowly. Other muscles were sluggish, uncertain. This was an aspect of the illness that was only now beginning to make perverted sense.

But the thought of Malice buoyed him up. Her song was incomplete. He could not rest until he possessed her. Nothing else mattered. The fire in his blood was not more fierce than that in her hair; the pool no more refreshing than her deep eyes. Her love alone—

The siege passed. Aton felt stronger, now. It had been easier to resist, once he remembered his purpose. But the other two had been less fortunate. They gazed at him alertly, but did not try to rise. It was up to him to penetrate the mystery of the zombies.

Ten women and one man had neither fled the last attack nor been affected by it. Aton advanced on them.

They retreated—as a group. They shuffled away, awkward, stiff, in unison. There could be no further doubt: they were possessed and under common control. This time it was no caterpillar, at least not a physical one, but the effect was similar.

“Kill them,” Bossman rasped from the pool. “They ain’t human no more.”

Aton caught up to the lone man, a medium-built, hardworking, and congenial person, hitherto. “Snap out of it,” he said, yanking him back by the shoulder. But the man fell backwards at the pressure and crashed stiff-bodied against the floor. He did not try to get up.

Aton got down and listened for the heartbeat. There was none. The man was not breathing. He was dead.

The women continued their retreat. He went after them again—and was stopped by a third assault in this intermittent series. This one was more strenuous than before. He could hardly force his legs to cover the distance to the nearest pool. They wanted to jerk to the same rhythm that ruled the marching women. The coagulating slime in his mouth increased his distraction.

He got to the water and toppled in headfirst, not caring for the moment whether or not be drowned, so long as it was at his own direction. Malice appeared again, a lovely vision, and his insatiable yearning for her drove back the other fever, reluctantly. That was the only thing that stiffened his will to resist. The urge of the fever was too strong to endure for long.

It passed, leaving him weak and gasping. Beside him Bossman was rigid and staring, eyeballs caked with blood. Aton was afraid the leader had been overcome, but a voice came out of the twisted mouth, clogged and croaking, but Bossman’s.

“I… can’t fight no more,” Bossman said. His arm struggled in the water and brought up the shining axe. “Take it… kill me if I go…”

Aton took it. He stood up and strode toward the group once more. Again the women shuffled away, some not even facing him, but moving in automatic steps with the others. And again the fever struck.

He realized that the fever was under conscious direction. As he withdrew toward the pool, it eased; as he advanced on the zombies, it clamped down. The message was clear: leave them alone.

Aton made his reply clear. He focused his mind on the dominating picture of his love, his unobtainable minionette, and continued to advance. He struck with his free hand at the nearest woman; the coordination required to wield the axe was beyond him. She fell without a sound, to lie as the man had kin. The strain of transition must have weakened the zombies so much that any added shock was fatal. He could kill with a single blow.

“Kill—” he thought. “But these are human beings, the people I have traveled with and lived with through the most terrible adventures of our lives. How can I kill them?”

But he knew the answer to that, and in the disorientation of the mental attack the reasoning made sense: kill, because these people were no longer human. They had given up their minds and wills to some Chthon influence as insidious as the caterpillar, and death was merciful. He knew this intellectually, and he felt it, somehow, emotionally: there was no personality remaining in the zombies. Kill.