The Beasts Of Valhalla

36

A half hour after we'd dug one of the snowmobiles out of a drift and started off, I knew we were hopelessly lost. The sense of direction that had guided me so unerringly through Mount Doom had disappeared. By now the storm was hitting us in full fury, and we were wallowing in a howling, wind- and snow-blasted world of freezing cold that had no horizon.

Even with Garth and Golly huddling around me, I kept nodding off at the controls, and it was only Garth's persistent shaking and slapping that kept me even semiconscious.

Then we ran out of gas.

My mother's dream…

Bad decision to allow Garth and Golly to come with me into the blizzard; maybe they could have made it out on their own, in the morning.

Maybe other Warriors from the Institute would have mounted a rescue party, found them; at least Garth would have been alive.

Maybe Garth's cells would have stopped exploding.

Despite his prehuman form, maybe Garth could have found Siegmund Loge on his own and stopped Project Valhalla.

While there's life, there's hope. Ho, ho, ho.

Maybe Loge, or even some other scientist, could have cured Garth.

Maybe.

April Fool's Day.

Bad decision.

My mother's dream…

Suddenly I realized that I had been asleep, and Garth's sharp pinch on my cheek had awakened me. I was in his arms, and he was on foot, struggling through snow that was thigh-deep, refusing to give up until his last strength was gone.

My mother's dream…

All the world…

Then Garth could go on no longer. Swaying, he held me very close, kissed me good-bye, then toppled sideways with me into the snow.

Something furry and very heavy fell on top of me, driving me even farther down into the snow. I wriggled, pushed at Golly, and she raised herself just enough so that I could see her display screen.

GOLLY LOVE MONGO

GOLLY KEEP MONGO WARM

While there's life, there really is hope. Ho ho, ho.

Alive, Golly and her sacrifice might keep me alive for a few more minutes, at most.

Dead, her sacrifice might keep both Garth and me alive for a considerably longer time.

Shhh.

"I love you, Golly. Thank you for your life."

I sliced open her throat, killing her instantly. Hot blood gushed forth into my face, momentarily clearing my senses, melting down the snow around my head. I wriggled the upper part of my body free, wiped the blood off my glasses, then buried Whisper in the base of Golly's throat and ripped down through bone and flesh, spilling her steaming guts into the snow.

Garth saw and understood what I was trying to do, and he helped me stretch and break open Golly's rib cage. Covered with warm, life-sustaining gore, we squeezed together into more gore, huddled together with our bodies wrapped around one another inside Golly's carcass.

Dripping blood and strands of gut hanging from the ripped rib cage almost immediately began to freeze, forming a bloody, intricate, lacelike barrier of strange and unlikely beauty between us and the storm outside.

Gestures, even empty ones, can mean something. Now there was absolutely nothing left to do. But we had fought to the best of our ability to the very end, and I believed that our mother and father would be proud of our struggle, no matter what kind of world they ended living in.

Garth and I, two beasts of Valhalla, lay inside the body of another, waiting to die behind a wall of tears and curtains of ice.