And I didn’t care. I loved him for it.
I turned, shotgun jammed against my shoulder, ready to fire. But the monsters were retreating, staggering toward the front gate. I ran after them, skidding on gravel, and shot one in the back. I tried to shoot another, but missed.
Henry didn’t seem to notice. He knelt beside his father. Samuel could barely hold up his head, and his eyes were dazed, wild. I wondered how he had gone years without acknowledging that anything was wrong beyond the borders of his land, when even others in his community had warned him to be careful at night. His only excuse was those monsters—those changed men—had never been consistent. Weeks could go by without seeing one.
I surveyed the yard. Nothing else seemed a threat. Cats sat in the dirt, fur raised. Growls rumbled from their throats. Corpses everywhere, and the air stank. Rachel dragged her daughters close as she crouched beside Samuel, but she stared at Henry and not her husband.
“You’re alive,” she whispered to him, and I could not tell if that was fear or wonder in her voice.
He gave her a helpless look, marred by the blood around his mouth, on his clothing and hands. “I’m not…” he began, and then stopped, looking past his mother, at me. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
Rachel looked down. Samuel stirred, pushing weakly at Henry.
“Get away,” he mumbled. “Oh my God. Get away.”
Henry stared at him and then stood. I moved close, and when his hand sought mine, I gave it to him. Rachel saw, and looked at me, deep and long.
“Steven,” I said. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” Rachel replied softly, and her face crumpled. “He’s gone. They took him first. He tried to fight, and they dragged him away. And then… they came for us.”
I knew that some of her despair had nothing to do with her missing son. “Rachel. It’s not like before. It’s over.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she whispered harshly, clutching her belly, finally meeting my gaze. “I recognized him. He might have… changed… but I know him.”
Him. I leaned back, unable to break her gaze, unable to stop remembering her face, years ago, ravaged with cuts and bruises. Same as mine. Mirrors should have disappeared with the rest of technology. I had buried two of them behind my barn, unable to stand seeing my eyes every time I walked down the hall or entered my bedroom.
“We’ll find him,” Henry said, tugging on my hand. “We’ll bring him—”
He stopped before he said home, but Rachel gave him a sharp look. Samuel seemed barely conscious.
“No,” said his mother, wrapping an arm around her daughters, all of whom clung to one another, weeping quietly. “No, don’t bring him here if you find him.”
Henry’s jaw tightened. Rachel tore herself from her daughters and stood, staring up at her son, searching his eyes with cold resolve. “It doesn’t matter that I love you. It doesn’t matter that I would forgive you anything. There’s no place for you here. Any of you.” Rachel looked at me. “You won’t be free if you stay.”
I touched my throat. Felt like it was too tight to breathe. I wanted to protest, fight, argue—but I couldn’t even speak. Rachel swayed, and turned away. Henry squeezed my hand. Staring at his mother.
We left them. I could hear distant shouts, the sounds of horses. Help, coming. The fire would be visible for miles. Even the nighttime reputation of this stretch of road wouldn’t be enough to stop the neighbors.
Henry and I stood at the front gate, staring at the trail of blood that led into the woods.
“He could be dead,” Henry said. “You should stay here.”
I reloaded the shotgun. It took all my concentration. I wanted to say something brave, but couldn’t speak. So I looked at Henry and he looked at me, and when I lifted my face to him, he kissed my cheek and then my mouth. Cats rubbed against our legs.
We entered the woods.
IT HAD BEEN three years. Maybe I expected snakes instead of vines, or razor blades in place of leaves, but everything that touched me was as it should be: a soft tickle of brush, the snag of thorns on my clothing and skin. I was almost blind in the darkness, and I was too loud. I crashed through the woods, crunching leaves and breaking branches, like a wounded creature, breath rasping. Henry moved in perfect silence, and only when he touched me did I know he was close.
“I can smell my brother,” he whispered; and then: “I wish I’d had more time to explain.”
“You had years.” I touched trees to keep from tripping. “Time runs out. When I saw you tonight, I couldn’t imagine how you had pretended for so long to be like everyone else. And I don’t know how they were so blind not to see that you’d changed.”
“Easier to believe,” he said quietly. “Easier to pretend than face the truth. Even when I had you and Steven helping me adjust to my new… instincts… I kept thinking I could be something else. If I prayed hard enough, if I stayed with the old ways.”
My fingernails scraped bark, and I felt heat travel through my skin into my blood, simmering into quiet fire—a sensation similar to knowledge, the same that guided me when blessing fences.
“The world is remaking itself,” I found myself saying. “Men die, forests swallow the cities and bones. And what remains… changes. Life always changes.”
“Not like this,” Henry replied. “Not like us.”
You’re wrong, I wanted to tell him, but heard a low, distant cough. All the calm I had been fighting for disappeared. I reached down, nearly blind, and cats trailed under my shaking hand.
When we found the clearing, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see well. I felt the open space, I looked up and saw stars, and my teeth began chattering. I gritted them together, trying to stop, but the chills that racked me were violent, sickening. Henry grabbed me around the waist and pressed his lips into my hair.
“I’m here,” he murmured. “Think about what you told my mother. It’s different this time.”
I squeezed shut my eyes. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to come back to this spot.”
“It can’t be the same one.”
I pushed Henry away. “I shouldn’t have visited you that night. I should have run and hid when I heard your mother screaming.”
He froze. So did I. And then he moved again, reaching out, fingers grazing my arm. I staggered backward, clutching the shotgun to my chest.
“Amanda,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed, ashamed. “I’m so sorry I said that.”
But even as I spoke, my throat burned, aching, and when I opened my mouth to draw in a breath, a sob cut free, soft, broken, cracking me open to the heart. I bent over, in such pain, shuddering so hard I could not breathe. Henry touched me. I squeezed shut my eyes, fighting for control. Not now. Not now.
But my mouth opened and words vomited out, whispers, my voice croaking. “When they saw me, when they chased me into the woods, you and Steven shouldn’t have followed. You knew… you knew you were outnumbered, that they had weapons. If you had just stayed behind—”
“No,” he said hoarsely, and then again, stronger: “No.”
His hands wrapped around my waist, and then my chest, and he leaned over my body in a warm, unflinching embrace. His mouth pressed against my ear. “I couldn’t protect my mother and I couldn’t protect you. But I had to try. Nothing else mattered.”
I sensed movement on the other side of the clearing. Cats hissed. So did I, struggling to straighten. Henry let go, but stayed close.
Bodies detached from the dense shadows, some on two feet, others crawling over the ground, bellies tearing the undergrowth. I raised the shotgun, but did not fire. One of them separated from the others: tall, bloated head, those black eyes.
I knew him. Rachel had known him. She was right—there was something about the shape of his face, the lean of his body. Still the same. Still him. Leader of the pack.
The woods were so quiet around us. A dull silence, like a muted bell. I expected to see a flash of light, or fee
l that old fire in my veins, but nothing happened. I expected to feel fear, too, but an odd calm stole over me—like magic, all my uncertainty melting into my hands holding the shotgun, down my legs into the soles of my feet. I took a deep breath and tasted clean air.
I heard a muffled groan. Henry flinched. “Steven. Give him to us.”
No one moved. I forced myself to take a step and then another, certain I would trip or freeze with fear. But I didn’t. I made it across the clearing, Henry and the cats close at my side, those small, sleek bodies that crowded into the clearing, like swift ghosts.
I stopped in front of him. Just out of arm’s reach. That lipless mouth opened and closed, and his black eyes never blinked. I wasn’t certain he had lids. Nor did I question why I could suddenly see him so clearly, as though light shone upon his rotting face.
My finger tightened on the trigger. I let out my breath slowly. My heartbeat was loud. I could feel my pulse, my blood, bones beneath my skin. But I still did not fire, and the creature in front of me stared and stared, motionless. I tried to remember what he had looked like when he was still a man, but that face was a blur. Dead now. All of us had died a little, and become something new.
I heard another groan. Henry strode past me. Bodies stepped in his path. He did not stop. I heard a snarl and a ripping sound, followed by splashing. I smelled blood. The creature in front of me never moved, though the others behind him swayed unsteadily.
“Amanda,” Henry called out hoarsely.
I tightened my grip on the shotgun, and sidled sideways, never taking my gaze from the leader, the once-man. A rasping growl rose from his throat, but that was the only threat; and none of the others came near me.
Henry stood beside a massive tree, a giant with a girth that reminded me of a small mountain rising fat and rough from the earth. Roots curled, thick as my forearm—cradling a body.
Steven. He was pale, wasted—and bleeding. So much blood, dripping down his skin into the soil, as though he was feeding the tree. Maybe he was. I heard a sucking sound in the roots, and when Henry bent to pick up his brother, I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him.
“Watch our backs,” I murmured, all the hairs on my neck standing up as I knelt beside Steven and set down my shotgun. The boy’s chest jerked with shallow rasping breaths, his fingers twitching in a similar rhythm. His wrists had been cut open, as had his chest and inner thigh. Cats sniffed his body, ears pressed flat.
My palms tingled. I almost touched him, but stopped at the last minute and laid my hand against the tree. I didn’t know what I was doing, or why, but it felt right.
Or not. A shock cut through me, like static on wool—but with more pain, deep inside my skull. I tried to pull away, but my muscles froze. And when I attempted to call for Henry, my throat locked.
This is what you want, whispered a voice, reverberating from my brain to my bones. This is what you need.
A torrent of images flashed through my mind: open human mouths screaming, echoing in the air of stone streets bordered by towers made of steel and glass; men and women staggering, falling, slumped in stiff, decaying piles as blood and rotting juices flowed between cracks in the road, or in grass, upon the roots of trees that grew in shady patches. Bodily fluids, watering the earth.
Heat exploded in my chest. I could move again. I grabbed awkwardly at Steven’s clothes, hauling him off those roots. Henry helped. My muscles were weak. So was my stomach. I leaned sideways, gagging. Cats pressed close, dozens, surrounding me.
“Amanda,” he said.
I shook my head. “Use your shirt to wrap his wounds. We need to stop the bleeding.”
He did as I asked, but glanced over his shoulder at the pale bloated bodies waiting so still in the shadows. “What about them?”
I hardly heard his question. I stared at the spot where Steven had been sprawled—a cradle made of roots—and suffered the weight of all those trees bearing down on me, as though full of watchful eyes, and watchful souls, and mouths that could speak. Steven’s blood was invisible against the bark, but I felt its presence.
Something changed us that night, I thought, and those once-men stirred as though they heard, coughs and quiet groans making me cold. They had laughed, before. Laughed and shouted and sung little ditties, and made hissing sounds between their teeth. Horror swelled inside me—mind-numbing, screaming horror that I was here, with them, again—but I fought it down, struggling to regain that spectral calm that had stolen over me.
Henry touched my shoulder. “We can go.”
Steven hung over his shoulder like a dirty rag doll. I picked up the shotgun but did not stand. I held up my finger. “Give me blood.”
He hesitated, glancing wildly at the monsters surrounding us. I knew what he was thinking. Any minute now they would attack. Any minute, they would try to rip us to pieces and feed on our bodies; as in life, so now in this twilight death. I didn’t understand why they waited—though I had a feeling.
“Please,” I whispered.
Henry’s jaw tightened, his gaze cold, hard—but he leaned forward and bit my finger. Blood welled. I touched the tree.
And went blind. Lost in total darkness. I could feel the sharp tangle of vines beneath me, and hear Henry breathing—listened, with a sharp chill, to wet, rasping coughs—but those sounds, sensations, might as well have been part of another world.
Another world, whispered a voice. We are more than we were.
My finger throbbed. I bowed my head. Pressure built in my stomach, rising into my throat—nausea, but worse, like my guts were going to void through my mouth.
Instead of vomit, my vision returned. I saw those dead bodies again, endless mountains of corpses sprawled on stone streets, and the sun—the sun rising between towers, glowing with crisp golden light. Beautiful morning, with clouds of flies buzzing over blood that was still not dry.
We were born from this, said the voice, which I felt now in my teeth, in my spine and ribs. Blood that killed made us live.
Time shifted. Again, I witnessed blood, and the fluids from those decaying bodies flow and settle, feeding the roots of grass and weeds, and the trees that grew from stone inside the dead city. I felt a pulse sink beneath the streets into soil and spread. I felt heat.
A rushing sensation surrounded me—as though I was being thrust forward, like a giant fist was grinding itself between my shoulder blades. Faster, faster, and all around me, inside me, I felt a surge of growth—my veins, bursting beyond my skin, branching like roots, bleeding blood into the darkness.
Blood, that became a forest.
A forest that swallowed a city.
Many forests, I thought. Every city swallowed.
And the blood spread, whispered the voice. The blood changed us all.
As it changed you.
I slammed down on my hands and knees, as though dropped from a great distance. Fire throbbed beneath my skin, a white light burning behind my eyes. I remembered that night, naked and bleeding, on the ground—Henry screaming my name, Steven sobbing, both of them beaten bloody—and I remembered, I remembered a terrible heat. I remembered thinking the men had set me on fire, that I would look down and find my skin burning with flames.
We tasted all your blood, whispered the voice. We tasted a change that needed waking.
So wake. And feed us again.
I opened my eyes. I could not see at first, but the shadows coalesced, and became men and trees, and small furred bodies, growling quietly. My hand was still pressed to the blood-slick roots of the tree, and something hummed in my ears. I felt… out of body. Drifting. When I looked at Henry, I saw blood—and when I looked at the monsters who had been monsters, too, while they were men, I also saw blood. Blood infected; blood changed by something I still didn’t understand.
The trees are alive, I thought, and felt like a fool.
The leader of the pack shuffled forward and dragged his clawed fingers over his face with a gape-mouthed groan. He cut himself, so deeply that blood ran down his s
kin and dripped from his bloated cheek. I heard it hit the ground with a sound as loud as a bell. And I imagined, beneath my hand, a pleasurable warmth rise from the bark of the tree.
“Henry,” I said raggedly, without breaking the gaze of the pack leader, the first and last man who had held me down, so many years ago. “Henry, put Steven down. You’re going to need your hands.”
“Amanda,” he whispered, but I ignored him, and picked up the shotgun. I settled it against my shoulder, my finger caressing the trigger, and looked deep into those black, lidless eyes.
Feed us again, I heard, rising through me as though from the earth itself. All we want is to be fed again.
I hated that voice. I hated it so badly, but I could deny it. Like instinct, stronger than knowledge; like my blood on the fence or Henry burned by sunlight. We had been changed in ways I would never understand, but could only follow.
“You know what you’re doing,” I said to the creature, which stood perfectly still, bleeding, staring, waiting. “You know what you want.”
What it had wanted, all these years, I realized. Living half-dead, hungry for peace, listening to voices that wanted to be fed. Like me, but in a different way.
So I pulled the trigger. And finished it.
I NEVER DID buy those pigs.
I found someone outside the Amish who would trade with me, and bargained for horses, good strong Clydesdales, almost seventeen hands high. Four of them. I had to travel a week to reach the man who bred them, and all he wanted was four boxes of bullets.
We left at the end of summer. No one bothered us, but no one talked to us, either. We were alone on the hill, though people watched from a distance as Steven and I took down the fence, board by board, and used each rail to build the walls of two wagons. Real walls, real roofs, windows with solid shutters. I had seen abandoned RVs, and always admired the idea of a movable home. Even if it was something I had never imagined needing. What we built was crude, but it would keep the sunlight out.
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