That man’s face flashed across Sam’s mind.
The kid may have forgotten Sam, but it still reacted to the man. The Odradek was pointing in his direction.
“You know, Sam, I’m starting to understand why BB is so important to you,” Deadman said, looking at the pod. “It’s just a tool. Life and death are supposed to be irrelevant. But we’ve got attached to each other all the same… Haven’t we?”
“Kid’s not just a tool. Name’s Lou,” Sam replied curtly.
Even if the BB had forgotten all about Sam, its name was still Lou. Sam stroked the pod and began to walk in the direction of the sewer exit.
Bells were ringing. They sounded like church bells.
But as they rang out across the battlefield, their purpose wasn’t to return the souls of the dead back to heaven, but to inspire them to fight and bring them back to life.
The bombers that controlled the skies dropped bomb after bomb after bomb, but the church spire remained unscathed. Like devoted followers fearing the wrath of God, each time the bombs fell anywhere near the spire, the bombers changed course. All the missiles and shells being thrown through the skies completely missed it. It was like someone had commanded that the bells weren’t to be silenced until all the dead, with their lingering attachment to this world, had been resurrected.
All those people had died before they even had a chance to realize it, at the hands of weapons designed to kill en masse. If life was a sentence, theirs had been interrupted partway through and left without a period to wrap everything up neatly at the end. And they were coming back to look for it.
Numerous filthy dolls in the shape of babies hung from a giant spider’s web that spanned the spire below the swaying bells. Some had their heads caved in, others were missing limbs, and some had bellies that had burst open. One of the dolls began to shake as if it was having a fit. With each spasm, a single eyelid jerked open and closed. It was like the doll was frantically pleading for something but unable to cry.
In response to its silent wailing, the man who lay across the center of the web awakened.
He had found the period at the end of his sentence.
The thread coiled around him unraveled, and the man gracefully descended out of the web.
And now it begins again. Someone was speaking. It’s finally time to put an end to this story of yours that was so cruelly interrupted. Flames erupted overhead as if to celebrate the man’s awakening, and the spider’s web began to go up in an inferno. Embers poured down like rain. The man placed a cigarette between his lips and let the rain light it. He breathed the smoke in deeply before letting it all back out and smirking.
Cliff had found him.
As the tobacco smoke diffused and disappeared, four soldiers took their place around the man. All were fleshless. Only bone. The man flicked the cigarette away and raised his arm up high.
Then he brought it back down, silently commanding his soldiers. Go forth. Take back the period that was snatched away from you. The man watched the soldiers move out. Capture the child and bring the man who won’t let go of it back here.
Once Sam had escaped the sewer, he was immediately greeted by bombs. They were showering down from the bombers above. They were still a distance away from the spot were Sam was standing, but the thundering sound of explosions still pierced his eardrums and the tremors shook his insides. He had to find that man. When he checked the direction that the Odradek was pointing in, he could see a church-like structure.
It had a strange appearance. Despite the fact that its foundations had been mercilessly decimated, the spire thrusting up into the sky wasn’t damaged in the slightest and stood firm. Sam didn’t know a lot about the structure of buildings, but even he knew that was unusual. The foundations were dust, yet the spire alone was still standing there. He wasn’t close enough to get a good look, but he couldn’t make out a single chip or crack. There wasn’t even any soot from the flames all around. In this place where anything and everything was an offensive target, destroyed and defiled, this tower alone was sanctified and protected.
And the Odradek was pointing right at it. That was where the man was.
But Sam had no idea how to get there. Bullets were flying all around him and there was no end to the bombing in sight. Flames scorched the sky and the shrieks of soldiers were constant. This was just like the time before. Sam was on a battlefield where the dead killed their fellow dead. Where the means of the massacre was on an even grander scale than the original battleground.
When Sam gazed up at the silhouettes of the bombers and checked the weight of his rifle, reality hit him.
Sam flitted from shadow to shadow, between broken barricades, disorganized sandbags, toppled-over tanks, and ruined buildings that dotted the cobbled streets, paying careful attention so as not to get caught up in the battle. Even though he could hear the final wails of agony from soldiers on all sides, he hardly actually saw any of them.
The thought of nuclear weapons suddenly crossed his mind. How just one bomb could kill countless people en masse and wreak destruction over an absurdly large area. Maybe this battlefield was far away from other people. Maybe it was a battlefield that didn’t involve humans, it was just one they died on. Where people killed one another at a distance, rather than staring their opponents in the face as they fought toe-to-toe with fist or gun. Where they died without the opportunity to understand their own deaths. It was a battlefield where all that remained was the never-ending absurdity of it all, stagnating like sediment.
The battlefield was an endless, absurd cycle.
The only way to put a stop to that cycle would be to make the dead aware of the fact that they were dead. Just as people in the world of the living incinerated the bodies of the recently departed, to deprive their soul of a place to wander back to and give them their period at the end of their sentence.
If this war and this battlefield really had existed in the past, then humans had been mass-producing BTs for a long time. Maybe voidouts and the Death Stranding were disasters of mankind’s own making.
Sam’s footing slipped as the thought distracted him. He placed a hand on the wall of the building and steadied himself. When he looked down at his feet, he found that puddles had formed in the empty spaces left by missing cobbles. Sam tutted at his own clumsiness and carried on forward. That’s when he realized that what had pooled at his feet wasn’t water, but blood. Sam wondered how many people’s blood it took to form a puddle this deep. He was submerged up to his ankles.
Sam tried to pull his foot back out, but someone’s hand was clamped around his ankle. It was trying to drag him back into the puddle.
Sam slapped at the hand that was now pawing at the barrel of his rifle, and used all of his might to yank his foot free.
—BB.
A voice calling out for the BB resounded within his head.
The puddle of blood began to swell and something appeared. Its helmet was slick with blood, its hands stained red, and blood was gushing from the end of its rifle. A skeletal soldier had shown itself. Without a moment’s hesitation, Sam sprayed bullets at it with his rifle. As it shattered to dust it was engulfed in flames and disappeared.
—BB.
Instead of wails of agony, Sam heard the voice of the man.
Then he felt a sharp pain shoot through his right leg. He had been shot. When he turned around, three skeletal soldiers were lying in wait. All three of them were pointing their rifles at him. The next one to fire was Sam. He may not have hit any of them, but at least they flinched, and while they did, he was able to make his escape into the shadow of a truck. There was a burning pain in Sam’s leg where he had been shot, and it felt like it had swelled to several times its normal size.