The Moldy Dead Read Online Free Page B

desperate, now.  Around them,
the empty shoreline stretched miles in any direction, the blackness of the
Geuji reaching to the highest flood mark.
    Bha’hoi snorted.  “We don’t care
what happens to the land.”  He kicked open the first crate and watched the
scaly flood that followed with greedy eyes.
    The sudden, intense fear emanating off the Geuji as
the vermin coursed over its glistening black body almost drove Esteei over the
edge.  He stumbled back, toward the water.
    Bha’hoi kicked open two more boxes
before Esteei regained his wits.  He ran forward, intending to knock the Huouyt
away from the box.
    The Huouyt caught him and held him
by the throat, his downy arm like solid ruvmestin.
    “Listen to me very carefully,
little Jahul.”  The Huouyt’s mirror-like eyes were icy cold.  “I’m not an
Overseer.  I never went to Huouyt Basic.  I was trained in a different place,
one you might know.  Does ‘Va’ga’ mean anything to you?”
    Esteei’s inner chambers stretched
to bursting, pumping rank fluids over his skin.
    Bha’hoi’s face twisted.  “I thought
it might.”
    To punctuate his statement, he
kicked open another box, to the resulting terror of the Geuji.
    “Now,” Bha’hoi continued, “Of all
the creatures on that ship, I liked you the most.  You didn’t get in my way.” 
He kicked open another box, allowing the vaghi to course out over the
landscape.  “In fact, it would’ve been hard to split the Ooreiki up without you
taking up Nirle’s cause like that.  Truly noble of you, Emissary.”
    Esteei shuddered at the cold,
psychotic emotionlessness of the assassin gripping his throat.
    He was faking.  All this time,
he was faking his emotions.  It was all an act.
    “The little Jahul finally
understands,” Bha’hoi said, smiling.  “Yes.  I can switch off my emotions as
you flip the incinerator switch on your body wastes.”  He cocked his head.  “I
have the feeling you picked up one or two real ones, but it never worried me. 
I knew your brain was too small to put it together.”
    Absolute, psychotic nothingness
emanated off of the Huouyt—so devoid of emotion it was an emotion.
    “Let me go,” Esteei whispered.
    Bha’hoi released him.  “Stay within
sight.  If you attempt to call the Claims Board, your death will be much more
horrific than the simple one I have planned.”
    “Please,” Esteei said, backing away
down the beach.  “Let me go.”
    Bha’hoi laughed.  “You want to stay
on Neskfaat?  What will you do out there?  You have no food, unless you wish to
eat your Ooreiki friends.”  He motioned down the beach at the half-buried
corpses, laughing.  “You’ll die slowly, Jahul.  If I do it, at least it will be
painless.  Besides, you’ve got time.  I’ve still got three other continents to
visit.”  He kicked open another box.
    Esteei continued backing up.  He
could outrun the Huouyt.  With six legs, running was one of the only things
Jahul could best other species at.  Seeing that, the Huouyt paused, a darkness
settling over his narrow face.
    “Come here.”
    Esteei froze.
    The Huouyt assassin sighed and
started toward him.
    Esteei ran.
     
    #
     
    Agony.
    It was all around him.
    The Philosophers were being eaten
alive.
    Crown flinched as the tiny jaws ripped
at his flesh, burrowing into it, consuming him as he lay there, unable to
fight.  Crown’s memories were disappearing with the agony in his body; the
connections, the conversations, the theories that he had made during his
lifetime slowly being devoured with his flesh.
    Crown endured it, but many others
couldn’t.
    Around him, Philosophers were
losing their minds along with their bodies.  They rambled, they pleaded, they
cried. 
    The vermin continued to devour
them.
    When the first Philosopher died, it
was the most horrible experience Crown had ever felt.  It broadcast its final,
terrified moments outward to all the others to help the others understand,
maybe prevent