Serena was dead; she kept telling herself so. But dead wasn’t a title she could accept, not if she was still here, still inside her body. Dead—she had hoped it would start to be a relief, at some point. After all, everything now was outside her control. There should be peace in that.
But there wasn’t.
She wanted someone to find her. Not in the same way that she had wished to be found in the last moments of her life—not in a frantic, desperate way. But she was protective of her body—it still felt as though it belonged to her. Even though it didn’t work anymore, it was hers, and she was still afraid of what could happen out here, in the woods.
Peace—what a joke, Serena thought.
She wished for certain things, as she lay in the woods: first, to talk to Becca one last time. Then she wished for grief. Because here, at the end, it would mean that someone had cared.
As time had pulsed on, though, some of Serena’s wishes changed colors—they faded and slowly began to evaporate, without Serena having to decide to let them go.
Each time one of her earthly wishes (to taste her mother’s chocolate mayonnaise cake once more, to finish that last story for journalism) faded away, she felt herself spread slowly outward. She felt both inside her body and bigger than her body. She saw out her eyes and down on the world, too. She still experienced the world through her body—she still felt the sting of ice, the crush of the limb—but at the same time, she could watch the world from afar. It was as though she were somehow able to see twice—once through her eyes and once perched from above, far enough away to see the entirety of the school grounds. It was more than odd—it didn’t make sense. (But what about her death did make sense, so far?)
Earlier that morning, as her classmates had returned to school, she’d watched them pull their cars into the lot and stream through the doors. She’d watched Becca knot a yellow hair ribbon on the flagpole before she stepped inside the building.
The ribbon pleased Serena. Becca missed her. Missing someone—that was grief, wasn’t it?
Though Serena’s awareness was swelling, spilling outward, she was not exactly all-knowing. She could not see inside the school. So when the bell rang, she was left only with the woods, the ice. The parking lot . . . and the cats.
The ferals arrived after the eight-fifteen lockdown went into effect, after even Rhine slipped inside. A pack of twenty or so slowly began to emerge, to creep closer, edging through the lot, toward the back of the school.
Serena knew that hunting must have been hard the past few days for the wild creatures that had begun to overpopulate the town. Rodents had surely taken shelter under floors of barns and in old logs during the storm, hidden from the ravenous ferals.
Black cats, yellow cats, gray cats now edged cautiously toward the Dumpster at the back of the school, as though hoping for some pizza crusts or half-eaten hamburgers, maybe a ham and cheese on white missing only three bites. The hungry homeless cats jumped to the lip of the Dumpster, one after another. They dipped their heads toward the interior of the trash bin, all but empty because it was now Friday, and the students hadn’t been at school to toss out their leftovers since Monday.
Serena easily zeroed in on a familiar animal—the calico cat she’d been feeding for months, on the back porch of her old house. Sweet Pea—that’s what she’d called her, every single time she’d brought a can of tuna or Fancy Feast, trying to convince the old cat to come close, to let her scratch her head.
Sweet Pea crouched low and moved toward a group of ice-covered bushes at the back of the school, trying not to be seen by the ferals who lined the edge of the Dumpster. She disappeared for a moment in the brown bushes, and emerged with a young bunny, a poor thing maybe even making its first outing since the storm. She scooped the mutilated creature in her jaws, letting its juices fill her mouth and trail down her neck in a bright shade of pink. Lifeless long ears and back legs flopped from the old cat’s jaws as she twisted her head this way and that, looking for a place to eat her kill in peace.
But she stopped short when she noticed a pair of pointed ears rounding the edge of the Dumpster. And another. Whiskers. Paws. Tails pointed skyward. All of them closing in on her.
Hunger buzzed from the pack of feral cats, making it clear that they all were willing to fight for the rabbit. Especially since the calico was old and not in the best shape.
Sweet Pea tightened her jaw and darted away from the school, through the small empty field that led straight into the woods.
The ferals followed as she raced in between piles of fallen limbs, her feet bouncing up with each step, making it appear that the ice was cold enough to burn the pads on her paws.
Sweet Pea stopped abruptly and opened her mouth, letting the slaughtered bunny fall to the snow. She stuck her nose into the air, letting it twitch back and forth.
She smelled something far better than that bunny. She staggered forward, a delectable new scent dragging her like a rope.
Serena could smell it, too, suddenly—the overpowering scent of fresh meat.
Sweet Pea followed the scent, her mouth squirming with anticipation. Serena could read her mind, the wild creature she’d come to know on the back porch of her old house. What had just died out here in the field? Sweet Pea seemed to be asking herself. An animal—far bigger than her rabbit. A soft, fleshy creature, judging by the smell. A possum? A coyote?
Twigs snapped. Ice crunched. Sweet Pea glanced behind her. The hungry ferals were still coming—following the same scent.
The cat raced forward a bit, attempting to lengthen her lead. Not too much, though—she didn’t want to lose that mouthwatering scent.
Poor thing, Serena thought. Without those cans of cat food, that tuna, her empty stomach probably felt as shrunken as a deflated balloon.
But then, the cat stuck her head beneath a fallen limb and found it: the source of the smell.
It was a human.
It was Serena.
The shade from the trees—all those limbs, those hundreds of gnarled, intertwined branches—had protected the ground from the sun. The crush of trees in the woods had just begun to warm enough to form a watery skin—but the ice hadn’t yet melted enough to drip. The thaw here was still new.
Serena’s body had been preserved by the ice, but now it was thawing. And sending out invitations for a feast.
Don’t do it, Serena quietly pleaded, staring at Sweet Pea through eyes like shiny stones. Please, Sweet Pea, don’t do it. Don’t you recognize me?
The ferals—two calicos, several black and gray cats, and a large yellow cat—salivated as they moved in. The sandpapery surfaces of their tongues dripped.
Oh, Sweet Pea, Serena thought. Please don’t let them. Please. Her body had been damaged enough by those brutal last moments right before her death, by being dragged into the woods and being hit by the fallen tree. She didn’t want the cats to do this to her body, too. She was terrified that if they completely destroyed her body while she was still somehow tethered to it, they would also destroy her spirit—that strange, still thinking, still feeling thing that had not yet completely slipped away.
But even if Sweet Pea could have heard her, she would not have listened. She was too hungry. And the other cats’ need was every bit as great. Sweet Pea edged her head deeper beneath the branch, hurrying, racing ahead of the other cats. Sweet Pea was so happy, her whiskers quivered—she was more than ready to be the first to sink her teeth into the flesh, ready to start feasting before any of the other cats had a chance to steal the choicest bite.
It didn’t matter to Sweet Pea that Serena had been feeding her for months, taking pity on her, showing her kindness. Sweet Pea was a wild thing. And she was hungry.
Serena tried not to look through her eyes at the cat, but down on the woods from her strange spiritual perch high above. She tried to distract herself from what was about to happen by thinking about how much like wrists the tree trunks looked, how the smallest branches were fingers reaching for the sky.
She wished that she could reach her arm up, too. Wished that she could grab hold of some magical force that would rescue her from enduring this final horror, the very thing she had feared since she was little. The monsters—in the woods—salivating as they grew close. It was happening.
Their feet sped, crunching through the snow. They purred as they grew close. They ran their rough tongues over their teeth.
Serena knew what was about to happen. And she was powerless to stop it.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
EIGHT
To be released from hours of rigmarole—changing clothes, registering, collecting textbooks, filling a locker, getting the official school tour—just in time to face the horrors of lunch as a complete and total outsider, Claire had decided, was truly its own special punishment. She’d missed her first four classes, including journalism. Of all things. The one class she’d truly been looking forward to. At least, that was what she told herself. She wanted it back, her love of stories. She wanted not to think of writing and remember what had followed the last story she’d cracked. It was maybe the worst thing that gang had done to her—soil the way she thought of journalism.
She filled her tray with soup and a soggy-looking grilled cheese, paid, and turned toward the buzzing cafeteria—tables upon tables of strange faces.
Claire glanced about nervously. Around her, chairs screeched across the tile floor; voices babbled on, as unstoppable as the gurgles of a river over rock.
And all of them—strangers.
She began to sweat nervously. Her body felt clunky. Her knees felt like they’d been wrapped with jogger’s weights. Her tray grew as heavy as a concrete block.
“Hey there,” a voice rang out beside her.
When Claire turned, she found herself staring into the prettiest thing she’d seen since she’d arrived in Peculiar. Ms. Isles, read her lunchroom monitor badge. Isles, the perfect name for a woman with eyes the kind of blue that could only exist somewhere tropical. A woman who even smelled like coconut, like a vacation breeze—and who had perfectly coiffed beach-blond hair and the kind of ridiculously perfect body that begged to be put in a bikini.
Isles stretched her hibiscus-red lips into a smile. “I think someone’s trying to get your attention,” she said, pointing across the cafeteria.
Claire followed Ms. Isles’s pointed finger and saw Becca Holman at a table, waving.
She took a grateful step forward. Behind her, the cash register tallied up another lunch, and Owen veered around Claire, taking long strides toward Becca’s table. Maybe Becca hadn’t really been waving to her at all, Claire thought, her shoes squeaking against the tile floor as she came to an abrupt halt.
She watched as Owen strutted, his body ladder-straight, his shoulders thrown back. He carried himself like a peacock, throwing his colors about wildly.
With another ring of the cash register, a second boy stepped around Claire—Chas, still wearing his letterman’s jacket with the leather sleeves. He carried his tray of food with one hand, easily sidestepping a girl who threw her chair backward without looking, right into Chas’s path. His movements were so easy, sure. No wonder, Claire caught herself thinking, he was named last fall’s most valuable member of the football team.
She stood, looking down at her tray, feeling dumber than ever as she continued to search for a place to sit. She wished she could melt straight into oblivion.
“Come on,” a low, smooth voice murmured into her ear.
When Claire lifted her head, she found Rich smiling at her. And just as it had happened in her street during the ice storm, Claire felt her nerves unwind.
“Don’t just stand there,” Rich said, his hands full of both a lunch tray and a stack of yellow papers. “You don’t want to miss a close-up view of the Bold and the Beautiful.” He winked, threw his head forward once in a gesture that insisted she follow.
Claire walked behind Rich and Ruthie, the cashier from ’Bout Out, straight toward the table where Becca sat, Chas and Owen like bodyguards on either side of her.
The air filled with high-pitched scrapes as Rich and Ruthie pulled two chairs back on the side of the table opposite Becca and the two boys.
“Claire Cain, a junior, just like us,” Becca told Owen and Chas, nodding once at Claire. “Her dad’s the prof on sabbatical. Renting the—” She stopped repeating the story her own dad had told her, and clenched her teeth, making the muscles on both sides of her jaw bulge. She cleared her throat, tucked her blond hair behind both ears. “The old Sims place.” She exhaled slowly, like the words had been hard to lift.
“Hi,” Claire mumbled. Realizing she was still standing, she hurriedly dropped her tray onto the table, slopping her vegetable soup over the edge of her bowl and onto her cheese sandwich in the process. She screeched her chair backward, and sat down between Rich and Ruthie, her face hot and sweaty. She felt uncomfortable in her heavy black Peculiar High cardigan, but she couldn’t take it off—it covered the scars on her arms, where the cuffs of her blouse rode up.
“Owen and Chas,” the girl said, pointing.
Owen nodded once, but Chas barely looked up from the video game he’d begun to play on his phone.
“Stop it,” Becca snapped at Owen, before dipping the tip of her fry into some ketchup.
“Stop what?” Owen asked.
“Staring at Isles.”
“I wasn’t staring at Isles,” Owen argued.
“Who doesn’t stare at Isles?” Rich muttered.
“I wasn’t, Wretch,” Owen snarled. “I was thinking.”
Rich shook his head, rolling his eyes in a should have known manner as the nickname hit the air.
Before Claire could ask about the name, Chas snorted at Owen. “Since when do you think?”
Owen glared.
“Hey, give me your algebra homework, will you?” Chas asked. “Mine got lost in the ice storm.”
Owen shook his head. “If you’d get off that thing for five minutes,” he growled, pointing at the phone, “you’d get yours done, too.”
“Ooooh,” Chas said, laughing as he punched at his phone, seeming to enjoy the comeback.
Owen continued to stare at him in a way that said he hadn’t meant it as a playful jab.
“You must be pretty bad off if you’re asking him for his homework,” Becca snorted.
“Whoa,” Rich said, holding his hands up in a way that demanded their conversation be cut short. Rich, Claire realized, didn’t usually run with this group. That much probably should have been obvious with his “Bold and the Beautiful” comment. She eyed the faces surrounding her table, wondering why so many people insisted on being books that spent the entirety of their high school years in one genre section—mystery (the loners), romance (the jocks and cheerleaders), literary (the brains and nerds), sci-fi (the socially inept techies)—and never wandered anywhere else. But then again, she reminded herself, she had once felt perfectly content never to wander from her own space, permanently—and happily—reserved at Rachelle’s side.
Suddenly, Rhine appeared, clomping his heavy shoes straight toward their table. “Rich,” he said. “I saw the flyer. I want to help. Tell me what I can do.”
“Help with what?” Becca asked. “What flyer?”
“That’s why Ruthie and I just came over. To tell you guys that we’re getting together a search party,” Rich said. “Three o’clock.”
“A search party,” Becca repeated.
Chas sighed, shook his head while he tried to zero back in on the game on his phone. Owen raised his arms—his own uniform shirt had been immaculately ironed, Claire noticed—and covered his mouth, like he was trying to convince himself not to be sick.
“We’re all going to meet up at ’Bout Out,” Rich announced. “I think maybe we should start looking there, then fan out. Maybe she was trying to get there, during the storm. It would ha
ve been dry and safe. Dad’s still got that warming center going, because we’ve got a couple of families with pretty bad damage to their houses, stuff that needs to be fixed by an electrician, and who don’t have power yet. I’m sure they’ll come help. I know Dad will—and I’m sure we can get Mom involved, too.
“I figure,” he went on as Becca’s face grew distant, “I’ll go home to grab all the weatherproof clothes I can find: long johns and Thinsulate socks and hiking boots and my weatherproof parka and extra sweatshirts and jackets. Nobody’ll have to bow out because they’re cold.”
“I was right here,” Rhine said. “At school. I mean, I keep thinking I should have maybe seen something. When Sanders cut the day short, it was like it shocked everybody. They all ran out, then started to come back for the papers and the books they’d accidentally left behind. I must have been here another hour, letting people back in, after the doors were locked. I never saw Serena. But if she never made it home from school—I just keep thinking I should have seen her at some point.”
“You can hang some of these flyers,” Rich said, handing him a chunk of his stack.
“We’ve hung flyers in the front window of the store, too,” Ruthie added. She leaned over the table, her chest bulging over the top button of her too-tight blouse. She shook her dark hair from her eyes just before reaching around Claire to push one of Rich’s yellow paper notices across the table. “We used her last yearbook photo. If you’ve got something more recent . . .” Her voice trailed, as Becca rubbed her forehead and pushed the flyer back toward her.
“Funny thing, isn’t it?” Becca snapped at her. “You wanting to help?”
Ruthie shot another pleading look at Chas. But he was lost in his game.
“I knew it,” Becca told Chas. “That first night, when she wasn’t at her house, and she wasn’t at yours, either. I knew something was wrong.”
Feral Page 8