Valley of the Dead by Kim Paffenroth Page A

he sucked it into his mouth like pasta. As he did so, he looked right at Dante with red, rat-like eyes, though he made no move to get up or attack, but slowly chewed the ghoulish mouthful with something like a half smile.
    Dante could feel his head going light and feared he might faint. He lowered his gaze, breathing deep and feeling himself shake slightly. He longed not only for the fury of the storm, but for the previous silence, because the slurping and smacking sounds from the three undead people assailed him like cudgels hammering his head. Not just the outside of his skull, but the sounds rattled around inside, giving wet, slapping blows to his brain. He looked up to see Adam and Radovan right by him, apparently watching him to see if he were going to fall over.
    “Now we really are in hell, aren’t we?” Dante asked in a soft, dry whisper.
    Adam shook his head, though he kept an eye on the three kneeling figures. “We live our whole lives right on the edge of infernal places, right where we can see, hear, and touch them at any moment. And, more importantly, where they can touch us. You should know that. There are foretastes of blessedness, and there are foretastes of damnation. Today you will see a great many of the latter in a very short time. You would take God’s blessings, and then refuse to look upon evil? Or perhaps even resent that it exists? Are you like Job’s wife? I didn’t think you so ungrateful, brother.”
    Dante slowly took in the small, spritely man, dragging his gaze up and down him. Adam had an irrepressible liveliness about him, the bright spark of reason and intellect, but at times like this it seemed to Dante it burned with a cold and comfortless brilliance. Nonetheless his words made Dante look up at the featureless sky, as he tried in this forsaken hell to think of any foretastes of blessedness.
    He thought of the warmth of Beatrice’s smile, and also of the beauty of her eyes, remembering they too could at times burn as brightly, coldly, and distantly as Adam’s wisdom. He thought of the babbling laughter of his two daughters, who could make him smile more easily and comfortably than the intimidating Beatrice ever could. His children held the promise of the future, full of unquestioning love, rather than the threat of rejection or reprimand. He reached farther back in his memory than he had in a long time, retrieving an image of his mother at his bedside when he was very young and sick nearly to death. Although he knew intellectually he had been in great pain during the time he was now recollecting, all that remained now for him to contemplate was the love and devotion shining from her face, the compassion pouring from her gaze even more tangibly than the tears she shed.
    He brought his gaze down and glanced over at Bogdana, who carried within herself another blessing, though it chilled Dante to recall his horrible promise to her to preserve and protect that blessing, no matter what horrors were necessary in order to do so. He nodded, and although it still made no sense that blessing and suffering should be so intertwined, he felt a little calmer and less despairing at their strange confluence.
    He looked past Adam at the three dead people still feeding, still oblivious to the three living men, gorging their apparently limitless bellies and empty minds with as much blood and flesh as they could rend and tear from either the body or from each other’s greedy hands.
    “Why don’t they attack us?” he asked.
    Adam seemed to hear Dante’s voice was more resolute and less pained. “Why do you think?”
    Dante considered them in as detached and objective a manner as he could. Although he could keep himself from shaking or weeping or running away, the nausea was unavoidable at the sight of what they were doing to another human being’s body. “They don’t realize we’re a danger, so they go on eating. They only kill in order to feed, so they won’t attack us until they’re done