The Stele of the Vultures

[Dogs231]

Death.

Five letters.

One syllable.

It had a million different meanings—literal, metaphorical, mental, spiritual, physical—a million different methods. But in the end, it always came; the terminus at the end of the tunnel, where the light should've been, the one certainty in the world, a constant, fixed figure, in a world where such things were rare as the most precious gemstones or the scarcest metals.

People could consider many things to be constants in their lives; the movement of the Sun and the Moon would happen every day and every night. But these were not true constants; death, however, was. Most of the stars in the sky had died long ago; so, too, would the Sun, given time. Death remained—its invisible, skeletal hand ever-present, unrelenting.

S091: CLAIRE HAIG — CONTINUED FROM "Beyond the Grave"

She stopped, dead in her tracks, as the announcement blared across the field—the fifth, she noted, of the great many to come. And she had begun to truly loathe the voice on the other end, gratingly insincere, an easy quality in the tone that was counterfeit to its core. But she would grin and bear it for now; the information available was too important to pass up.

SHANNON CHOI

CASSIE CHAO

REBEKAH HAYES

BETHANY LYON

CORBIN AZINGER

PERANTE LOSOA

REN VU

TIMOTHY ADAMS

JACK KILGORE

SALEM FOX

KARIN HAN •

MATTHEW BELL •

A bitter frown crossed her face. Then, she shook her head and continued walking. The night was dark, and the air was thick with the scent of iron, the only light the stars above her head. Her eyes narrowed, but even with her glasses, her sight in the dark was beyond useless. She lowered the thermal vision goggles over her face and, with a click, powered them on.

The world lit up again, a crystalline picture of cyan hues, like blue stained-glass windows in a church. Everything was as clear as day; so, too, was the coast. There was no telltale heat signature of other beings. The forest was empty, as far as the eye could see. Then, she looked up, and she realized that her destination was near at hand. She was almost there.

She had noted its location earlier that day, marked by a cloud of smoke that previously hung above it. Eventually, the fire had died, and the smoke had blown into the win, but still, she pressed forward. The trek there across the snowfield was long and arduous, but even still, she broke into a sudden run. It was so close; she could almost taste the ash in the air.

She stepped into a clearing. But far from the sound of living people she had expected, the voices and the chatter, there was only a deathly silence. And here, the smell of fire and cooked flesh mixed with the pungent odor of steel and rot. It was overwhelming. A wave of nausea, no, a tsunami; the bile rose in her throat, more than eager to free itself.

And then she saw it.

Amidst the dying embers of the campfire, there was a broken silhouette; its edges tinged by char, blood thick and congealed, black as ink, across a deep wound that split the head—as if someone had unzipped it. She could no longer recognize who it was. Scattered tracks surrounded the smoldering wood, a million directions where the footsteps led away.

She had reached her limit. The bile soared, and she doubled over, arm against a tree. Everything she had eaten over the last day ejected immediately. Even after that, she couldn't stop, body racked by convulsive dry heaves, gag reflex on highest alert. Again and again and again, she retched until her whole form ached and tears stained her eyes.

Claire knew death.

A statement true only in the abstract, on a conceptual level; something that, like physics or mathematics, she understood, but only just—its deeper meanings and infinitesimal layers seemed to evade her grasp, slipped down between the cracks like sand between her fingers. She knew its definition, telltale signs, the hole it ripped deep in your heart.

She had seen death before; in movies, in shows, and in games, she had seen it. But through those mediums—separated from her world by a computer monitor or a television screen—it didn't feel real. The spatters of blood and long trails of gore were, to her, just red pixels—there was nothing else to them. Hex Code #FF0000 and nothing else. Just a color.

But she also had experience. As the only child of a veterinarian, she was no stranger to the idea. After all, the role of a veterinarian centered on a single concept: to prevent suffering. If an animal was sick, you treated it; if it was too ill for treatment, or if the treatment was worse than the illness, you let it go. She had witnessed such a thing many times before.

Her family had many creatures in their home. And she loved each of them dearly. Often, when those pets grew sick, her mother's expertise proved invaluable in their treatment. But still, with every malady came a reminder: all good things would come to an end. If the damage proved too great to mend, it would fall on their shoulders to end the suffering. It always did.

She had been present, to her knowledge, for two such incidents. In her early teenage years, her Golden Retriever, a once-spry animal not long in the tooth, came down with cancer. Fluid began to fill his body. Eventually, it proved impossible to surmount the disease. Only one option remained, only one choice they could still make. It came in the form of a needle.

The memories now were a broken haze of emotions and feelings. There was no deep recollection of the events of that night. But she could feel the pain in her heart. The one token she still had of his existence was far from her grasp—his old, worn olive-green collar, its tags still on—tucked away on top of a shelf in the furthest corner of her room from her desk.

The other was her first cat, a creature older than her, whose existence, to her, seemed unquestionable. A constant in her life once, his black-and-white tuxedo pattern flitted in and out of her vision as she went about her day, sometimes here, sometimes there, always everywhere. Until he wasn't anymore; he passed only a year before. The pain was still fresh.

She remembered something distinct. For days and days afterward, after they'd put the body to rest and buried it in their garden, she'd noticed strange things. She swore she could sometimes see the black and white shape in the corner of her eyes and hear a voice in the echoes in her ears. But it always left, gone the moment she realized. She knew the reason.

Her brain was filling in the gaps with something familiar. There was a space in her life now, so to fix that, her brain filled those holes with something that approximated what had been there. She wondered if anyone else had ever experienced that. Like the ringing in her ears, the phenomenon made her feel distinctly abnormal—unwell and alone.

She had seen death in media, and she had seen death among animals, but what of a human being? No, she couldn't say she had ever experienced it truly. It existed at an arm's length, distant but ever-present, a specter. That concept reminded her of the passing of her grandmother, a wonderful woman. This island had brought that memory before.

Her grandmother passed while Claire was asleep, almost one hundred and fifty miles away. She had never learned to forgive herself for not being there as she went. For that woman who had always been there for her, supporting, Claire had failed to return the favor in the most critical moment of them all. She wasn't sure she would ever accept it completely.

But here and now, she had seen a body, the shattered, mangled, crimson-tarnished remains of a person she had seen in the hallways. And she lamented that for all the years they had spent together as classmates, she scarcely knew them, their faces and names in her mind, but of their natures, she knew nothing. And she would never have the chance now.

"Another thing that I took for granted," Claire thought. "Another regret for me to take to my grave."

She couldn't even have the small closure to know which one of her many classmates had perished. That secret would lay forever more in the minds of two; that of the calcined effigy and of their killer, who would, almost certainly, take it to the grave. The thought sickened her, and another wave of horrid tumults wracked her. But, eventually, they ended again.

She took a second; with it, a breath of decaying, putrid air. A series of sputters then echoed out, and she released it. Then, for a moment, she psyched herself up and steeled herself for the task yet to come. She needed a victory. It was too late to turn back; she had come too far to give up. So, she peeled her eyes and clasped her hands over her mouth.

Claire pulled up the goggles. In the distance, she saw the golden glint of metal in the moonlight, like a cursed idol; with unsteady steps, she moved towards it as if pulled into its influence. Whatever it may have been, it remained buried under the snow; next to it was the familiar figure of a lacrosse stick, almost symbolic of their school's sole success of note.

When she came upon it, she saw a handle stuck into the ground, like the sword in the stone of Arthurian legend; her Excalibur. She drew it out, and it left without a fight as if intended for her hands alone. She held it aloft, and its curved, sickle-like blade glistened in the starlight. A fire—likely the one at the center of the camp—had scorched it, but not irrevocably so.

It was a khopesh, which she recognized—an ancient weapon with an esteemed history. In a way, it felt odd in her hands, far lighter than it looked. She swung it at a nearby tree, and it lodged itself in the side. It took her several seconds to pull the dull blade free. For it to be usable, she would need to sharpen it. She knew it was a task that was possible.

She stowed it at her side, in her belt, and slung the lacrosse stick—for Evie, perhaps—over her shoulders. The two needed weapons; as the field narrowed and the clock ran down, that would become more and more of a pressing concern. So, though the idea of grave robbery felt wrong, she pushed down the weak guilt in her mind, self-preservation stronger still.

Claire took one last look at the burnt corpse. "Thank you," she muttered to it. "I hope that, wherever you are, your rest is peaceful." If she had any coins—and the corpse any eyes—she would have given it Charon's obol. It was the least she could do to pay her respects to the one who had drawn her here, to this place, where she found the tools she had taken.

And yet she couldn't even do that.

With a gulp, she looked away again; the guilt rose once more, as did the bile. Then, she pulled the thermal vision goggles over her face again, did an about-face, and ran. Amid the footfalls, she heard the sound of the radio's crackle in her coat pocket. She would answer the call later, but when, though, she did not know. Soon, she resolved, but not quite yet.

And then, she disappeared once more into the night.

S091: CLAIRE HAIG — CONTINUED IN "The Children's Crusade"