Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  “They have rules,” said Jenny.

  “I heard about you,” she said. “You’re the one with the great big boyfriend everyone’s afraid of, yeah? The one who killed to protect you. The guy you saved after he died.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “These Heathens talk like old women. Yap, yap, yap. All gossip. You’re a legend already,” she said. “You’re their favorite. They all want to follow you.”

  “Not anymore,” said Trix.

  “Just because one got killed doesn’t stop them from wanting to be a part of your story,” she said. “It just makes some want it more. Danger and excitement.”

  “It was an accident,” said Jenny. “He didn’t mean to.”

  “So the big, bad boyfriend has teeth now,” she said. “Too bad. Shit happens. The Heathens ran off to Expo, but they tell the story and others want to be a part of it. People give them booze to talk about it again. The story gets bigger and crazier and brighter. Soon you’ll either be the Big Bad Wolf or Superman. It all depends on how they tell the story. Fuck the Heathens. They don’t have rules. It’s a joke. They’re worse than these bastards living in filth. At least you know what you’re going to get here. The Heathens, they keep it a secret. They’ll trade you for stuff, but if they want something, they’ll take it. If they want you, they’ll take you. It’s different when you don’t have the Big Bad Wolf to protect you.”

  “Jesus,” said Jenny.

  “I have to go,” she said, backing towards the door. “Are you going to stop me?”

  “You said you have connections,” said Jenny. “What kind of connections?”

  She shrugged. “I can get anything.”

  “We need diesel. Can you find us some?”

  “How much?”

  “Enough to get us to New York,” said Jenny.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you going to New York?”

  Jenny looked away. “I have my reasons.”

  “Fine, I can’t help you,” she said. She started to open the door.

  “My mother,” Jenny blurted out.

  “Fuck, cheerleader. Don’t tell her that.”

  Jenny ignored her. She had the woman’s attention. “My mother is Anna Hawkins. She’s in New York.”

  The woman stared at her for a moment. “Hawkins?” she said. “The plague doctor?”

  “Yep. That’s the one.”

  “And you are going to what? Find her? Protect her? This woman who started this shit?”

  “I’m going to kill her.”

  “Oh.” The woman looked from Jenny to Trix to Benji. “Just the three of you?”

  “Four,” said Jenny. “There’s one more. He’s…incapacitated.”

  “You’re going to kill her? This isn’t some joke?”

  “No,” said Jenny. “I’m going to make her tell me where my sister is. And then I’m going to kill her. She’s killed hundreds of children.”

  “I know,” said the woman. “She killed my son.”

  “Holy shit,” said Trix.

  “It was many years ago,” she said. She gave a deep hard sound that may have been a sob, but sounded much deeper. “Now all my children are dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny said.

  “I’ll take you to New York,” she said. “I have a vehicle, a big one.”

  “What do you want in return?” said Jenny.

  “Nothing,” she said. She looked toward the hall and looked back again. “But I have to do something in the basement first.” She met Jenny’s eyes. “You come, too? I don’t know why, but I can’t look at her alone.”

  “Why are you doing this for us?” said Jenny.

  “Because you’re going to kill Anna Hawkins, who killed my Roberto,” she said, her brown eyes growing hard and cold.

  “Will you come with me?”

  Jenny frowned. “What’s in the basement?”

  “Please,” she said, taking Jenny’s hand. The woman who had seemed so strong before looked fragile now, looking out into the hall. “I can’t talk until I finish it.”

  “First tell me your name,” said Jenny.

  “Robin,” she said offhandedly. “Robin Velasquez.”

  “Okay, Robin. Let’s go to the basement.”

  They didn’t speak. Jenny followed and Trix and Benji stayed behind to rifle through the dead man’s stash. Robin stepped heavily down the stairs as if heading to her own execution. Jenny pulled her to the side when she almost stepped on a track-marked arm or a suspicious-looking puddle. She didn’t look up or around at Jenny, just kept her eyes forward. As if she were afraid that she’d get lost if she took in her surroundings.

  “What’s in the basement, Robin?” Jenny finally asked around the second floor. The woman didn’t answer for a very long time. Jenny gripped her knife tighter and glanced behind her every few seconds. Robin was shaking, her knife clipped into a sheath on her hip. The sheath was leather with markings on it as if from a child’s drawing. She touched it from time to time, one finger stroking the leather. Finally at the main lobby Robin reached back and grasped Jenny’s wrist. Her hands were cold.

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said. “I don’t know if I can see her.”

  They stopped, Robin looking at a door set next to the stairwell. It was marked with a big letter B.

  “What are we doing, Robin?”

  Robin touched her chest gently, her fingers right over her heart.

  “Ending this,” she said quietly. “Stopping the nightmare. Her nightmare.”

  She reached out and pulled the door open. The smell of death wafted up and Jenny pulled her shirt up over her nose as they descended. Robin didn’t seem to notice. A tendril of hair had come out of her tight ponytail and pasted to the side of her face. Jenny looked at her and realized it wasn’t stuck there with sweat, but with tears. Robin was crying without making a sound.

  “Robin, your daughter who was taken. You said that’s why you killed him.”

  She didn’t take her eyes from the stairs. Light was filtering up from somewhere, a dim light was visible in the dankness below. A smell of earth and mildew and rotters filled her nose.

  “Yes,” she said, breathless. “Her name was Amy.”

  “Was?”

  Robin let out a shaky breath, her lip quivering, then gave a curt nod.

  “Was,” she repeated.

  A moan, metallic and wretched, came drifting up. The smell of death grew stronger. And mixed with the mildew and dirt and decomposition Jenny smelled something else, plain as day. Sex.

  “What the fuck is this place?” Jenny said. But they’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Robin had her eyes closed, afraid to see. The rotter moans grew louder. Jenny forced herself to look. They were in a large cellar, the cement floor cracked and stained. An old furnace that hadn’t been touched in a decade took up half the room. The other half of the room contained a mattress and a large round mirror, almost five feet in diameter, on a stand. The mirror was aimed at the bed and Jenny realized that it was used to reflect the light from the window onto the bed. She gagged, but made herself look, her hand tight over her mouth.

  The thing on the bed had once been alive, but was nothing but a husk now. She’d once been a girl, barely a teenager. Her hair had been dark like her mother’s. She was tied to the bed spread eagle, the ropes loose and the skin on her wrists and ankles rubbed down to the bone. She wasn’t wearing clothes.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Jenny. Robin opened her eyes and opened her mouth in a sob that was too deep for sound. She stood frozen like that for what seemed an eternity, the tears pouring out of her eyes, her face frozen in grief. And finally when the sound came, it was otherworldly, so powerful that Robin fell to the ground, not even bothering to catch herself. She couldn’t look away, her eyes locked to the rotter on the bed who was once a girl named Amy. Robin gasped for air and then made a noise like she had tried to scream, but hadn’t had the energy or breath to complete the act. She kicked weakly at the gro
und, still staring. Jenny saw that she was holding the knife now, both hands grasping it like a crucifix.

  The thing on the bed, the rotter who used to be Robin’s daughter, thrashed feebly on the bed, just as weak as her mother. She snapped her jaws at them, looking around wildly. Jenny realized her head was strapped to the bed so she couldn’t move it, the bare mattress beneath her stained with decomposing skin and fat and meat. And more.

  Jenny crouched next to Robin and took the woman’s face in her hands. Robin’s bloodshot eyes widened, as though she’d forgotten all about Jenny.

  “I can’t save her,” Jenny whispered. “I’m so sorry. She’s too far gone.”

  “I thought I could do this,” Robin breathed. She shook her head. “I can’t. It’s still her. I can see her still in there.”

  “She’s not,” said Jenny. “Amy is gone, Robin.”

  Robin looked at the rotter and it hissed at her.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You don’t have to,” said Jenny. “Let me. Okay? Let me do this for you.”

  Robin nodded, her eyes wide, and pushed the handle of her knife into Jenny’s hand. Jenny took it as Robin fell back, her breath coming in gasps. After a moment, Jenny realized she was singing, her voice raspy and ragged and out of tune.

  “You make me happy when skies are gray,” Robin sang so quietly that it was hard to hear her. But the rotter grew silent and stared at her.

  “You’ll never know dear how much I love you…”

  Jenny walked over to the bed, again pulling her shirt over her nose.

  “What are you going to do, Jen?” said Casey.

  “Please don’t take…”

  “Go away, Casey,” Jenny murmured. And he disappeared.

  Jenny wrapped her fingers around the knife and put one knee on the bed.

  “…my sunshine…”

  She frowned and leaned toward the rotter.

  “…awaaaaay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny whispered. And thrust the knife up under the rotter’s chin. It didn’t struggle, just stared at Robin and seemed to be almost at peace when it felt the knife go into its brain. Robin began to sob and didn’t stop for a long time. Jenny held her and let her cry, her body racked with pain and grief. When she was finished, she looked at her daughter.

  “Help me bury her and then we can go,” she said.

  Robin gently untied the corpse of her daughter and carried her up the stairs. She was so light, no heavier than a doll. Jenny wasn’t sure how Robin could stand the smell. When they got to the top, three guys standing by the door looked at each other when they saw what Robin was carrying.

  “You stupid bitch,” the biggest one said. “What did you do?” In unison, they each took dirty knives out of their belts. They had track marks on their arms and stunk worse than the dead girl.

  “Go ahead, Robin,” Jenny said, feeling something familiar rise up in her. Something she hadn’t felt in a long while. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “The fuck you will,” said the second junkie. “You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart. Drop the rotter.”

  “She’s not a rotter,” said Robin.

  “Drop her,” he said again. The others looked like they were trying not to smile.

  “I have a better idea,” said Robin. “I think I’ll drop you instead.”

  This time the biggest junkie did laugh. Jenny was behind him in seconds with her knife to his throat. He went slack and almost fell, his knees giving out.

  “Shit, lady. What the fuck? We’re just doing our jobs. We can get another rotter.”

  “Yeah,” said the junkie closest to Robin. “We’ll just get another one. Let him go and you can take the fucking thing.”

  “Thing?” said Robin. “Did you just call her a thing?”

  “What else would I call it?” he said, seeming genuinely confused.

  Robin hoisted her daughter’s body onto her shoulder. Her shirt was stained with whatever was coming out of Amy’s body. She was abused and unfed and it was only a matter of time before she fell apart. Robin was holding her knife, a different one that she'd taken out of a hidden sheath under her shirt. The junkie was staring at the blade when Robin sent her boot into his crotch. He doubled over immediately, gagging. She reached down and when she brought her hand back up it was covered in blood. Robin was fighting for her daughter’s corpse, her dead daughter’s honor. Just a stringy woman with nothing left in the world, and she was still fighting. The man grabbed at his own throat, trying to stop the blood, trying to live. The blood was thick in the air and Jenny felt dizzy.

  Jenny knew then that she had to live too. At least for now.

  “Go on ahead, Robin,” she said, something odd in her voice.

  “What?”

  “Go ahead,” Jenny said. “I’ve got this.”

  Robin looked down at the man she’d cut. He was twitching on the ground, the blood pooling underneath him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go,” Jenny said, her voice low. Robin frowned, not sure what was happening, but backed away from the remaining two junkies. One was looking from Robin to Jenny and scratching his arm.

  “Wait,” he said weakly. Robin was soon out of sight and Jenny smiled.

  “Hello, boys,” she said, looking at the other junkie over her captive’s shoulder.

  “Look, lady,” said the big junkie from behind her knife. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Neither do I,” said Jenny. “But I am so, so hungry.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Robin was true to her word. Jenny helped dig the grave behind the bank building and Robin laid her daughter’s body gently down. She didn’t cry as they buried her, but Jenny thought she heard her muttering a prayer and singing to her again. Trix and Benji arrived with Declan on their shoulders, just as Jenny jammed a makeshift cross into the ground.

  “He threw a goddamn fit about leaving the Mustang,” Trix whispered.

  “What’s done is done,” said Robin, looking at the loosened earth. “She’ll be at peace now.” She looked up and met Jenny’s eyes. “It’s better than this fucking world.”

  She turned and they followed her. Four blocks, twisting and turning like she wasn’t sure where she was going. Six blocks now. Trix and Declan started to make comments in a low voice which Robin ignored, if she heard them at all. Finally she stopped in front of a copse of trees, the bushes wildly overgrown. Robin stared into the darkness between the trees.

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t,” Jenny said.

  “You’re really going to kill her?”

  Jenny thought about her mother. She remembered her rage as she stared into the Undead face of her sadistic grandfather. She remembered Casey and Abel and everyone else who had died so recently that she still felt raw inside. She could still feel Sully’s hands inside her body, cutting her, ripping her apart and putting her back together again. She thought of Declan. And all the skeletons, the tiny, tiny skeletons buried under her mother’s old lab.

  “Yes,” said Jenny. “I really am going to kill her.”

  “She’s your mother.”

  “She was never a mother,” said Jenny, the venom in her voice surprising her. “What you and your daughter had? I’ve never known anything like that. It’s all alien to me. My mother is a sociopath.”

  “Have you ever had a child?” said Robin, her voice so steady that it was eerie.

  “No,” she said.

  “Good,” she said. “They bring you nothing but pain. They leave you one way or another, and it opens up a hole inside you that you try to fill, but it just stays empty. Like a black hole. Just sucking the life from you. Until you’re walking around and you look like a person and you sound like a person, but there’s not a shred of yourself inside of you. You’re just…nothing.” Robin looked at Jenny then. “Do you know that feeling?” Jenny didn’t answer. She looked away. Robin shook her head. “I hope not. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.�
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  “Look, lady,” said Trix. “Is this legit or what? Do you even have a car?”

  “Yeah,” said Robin, “I have a car. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?” said Trix.

  Robin started pulling at bushes and plants and they came away easily. They had looked overgrown because they were covering something big. Something huge. Jenny came forward to help her. When they were finished, Trix was finally speechless.

  “What the hell is that?” said Benji.

  “Welcome to my home,” said Robin.

  It resembled a motor home, but more. The tires were oversized and heavy iron pipes were welded around its boxy frame. It was rusted and dirty and there was a large, rotter-sized black smear on the door.

  “How do you get it around?” said Trix.

  “Most of the roads are clear now,” said Robin. “And…I used to have help.”

  Everyone grew quiet, but Declan shook Trix and Benji off and limped toward the beast. He walked around it.

  “What does it run on?” He sniffed. “Grease?”

  “Yeah,” said Robin. “It smelled like patchouli when I found it, but it’s been good for me. Gets me where I want to go.”

  “How do you keep the rotters out?” he said.

  “We reinforced the doors and windows. There are metal bars inside that latch all the way around. When the rotters come, we just wait them out and they eventually wander off. It was never a problem, not until recently. People are getting real weird these days. I mean, the Dreg stops were always a little shady, but now? Fucking freak show. Drugs coming in now too. You saw it. A whole fucking pile of the shit. It’s everywhere now. Junkies are worse than the Rotters.”

  “You know we’re not exactly normal, right?” said Declan. “You deserve to know. We’re not safe.”

  Robin sniffed. “I know what you are.” She looked at Jenny. “I’ve heard the stories.”

  “What have you heard?” said Trix.

  Robin shrugged. “You’re dead but you’re not. You were infected with the plague but it didn’t send you away. You’re still present. Still have your minds. Is that true?”

  “Pretty much,” Declan said. He met Jenny’s eyes. “For the most part.”