by Ilsa J. Bick
When and if? Oh, dream on, honey. Honestly, some days, even she got exasperated with herself. This was like sitting through Titanic: just sink already. She was always under guard. And exactly where would she hide all these marvelous weapons? Get herself caught and she could kiss her little foraging forays good-bye. Then she’d completely starve. While Wolf might protect her, she didn’t think he’d take kindly to her whacking him with a crowbar. If she even could. Because she already had a knife. That Wolf let her keep it after that first day was nothing short of miraculous. Yet had she gotten all Princess Bride and slunk around at night to slit a couple throats? To reach over as Wolf lay dreaming his happy, lusty little wolf-dreams and cut out his heart?
No. Get real. That stuff only happened in the same books where the heroine scarfed down raw white pine. This was real life.
And yet she had motive. She had opportunity. She knew exactly where the carotids were, and how deeply to hack. Do it fast and she actually might pull it off. After all, it was only five against one. So what was she waiting for?
Well, hell, I don’t know. Focus on what you can do, all right? Like that garden; you ought to check it out. Sighing, she sheathed her knife. If I get a chance …
Acne exploded. No warning, no red-alerts from the monster, no change in Acne’s scent at all—really, how much hungrier could the kid get?—and he did it fast, in absolute silence, launching himself like a missile she only half-registered from the corner of her eye. Gasping, she jerked her arm partway up just as his fist rocketed for her face.
The hit was blinding, a stunning white detonation in her left cheek, just below her eye. A cry tried jumping off her tongue, but then his hand muscled around her throat, clutching at her jaw. Yanking her upright, Acne began drunk-walking her across the cabin.
“Ac … B-B-Ben!” she wheezed as she stumbled, off-balance, her hands hooked onto his. “Ben, d-don’t! St-stop, stop!”
But Acne, the boy who’d called himself Ben Stiemke, was an insatiable storm, in the mood for meat. Driving her the length of the room, Acne slammed her against the wall. Her head thunked hard enough for her vision to drop out, like a jump cut in time. Her jaws snapped. Pain erupted in a red dazzle as her teeth tore her tongue. Blood flooded into her throat. Gagging, she felt Acne’s hand shift and knew, instantly, what he was going to do.
Panic sheeted her brain. Try to kill her by strangulation and she still had a chance: a knee to his groin, a punch, maybe take out his eyes with her fingers. But pinch off her carotids in a blood choke, and she’d gray out in seconds, be dead in minutes, and with a lot less fuss.
Then she thought, The tanto. She’d sheathed the knife. Dropping her right shoulder, she twisted, fingers straining. It was a desperate move, hopeless from the start because even in a killing frenzy, Acne read the set of her body. Viper-fast, he snatched the tanto from its sheath and turned the blade until that razor tip was poised over her left eye.
Her blood slushed; she stopped fighting. She could see how this would go. A quick flash of cold steel and then she’d be screeching, eye gone, the screaming socket dripping eye jelly and blood.
They hung there, unmoving, a shuddering instant out of time. Then, Acne dragged in a harsh, preparatory breath and she had time to think, No!
Lips peeled in a snarl, Acne drove forward. Whirring, the knife flickered past her face to bury itself in the wall. From the green, liverish stink boiling from his skin, she knew then that, however much Acne wanted to rip out her throat and gorge himself on her meat—feel its warmth and her blood in his mouth—first, he wanted her to suffer. He had her, and he was going to enjoy this. He would enjoy her.
She began to thrash. Bracing her back against the wood, she kicked, aiming for Acne’s groin. But this wasn’t as it had been days ago in the snow. His reach was so much longer it wasn’t really a contest, and he arched out of the way. Yet it did her some good, bought her just a few more seconds, because he had to shift his grip to hang on. As soon as he let up, she managed a single sip, a terrible sensation of dragging air through a rapidly collapsing straw, and then that was it—and not nearly enough. She had nothing with which to fight, and she was starting to lose it, her vision going first blurry then moth-eaten.
Deep in the dark, the monster came alive, a spider skittering in the cave of her skull, and then she was tumbling into that black whirlpool behind Acne’s eyes, watching her face going the color of an eggplant, the whites showing in half-moons as her eyes rolled. The end of her life unspooled in a jumble of images: Acne choking her, but only to the point where she passed out, then allowing her to wake, driving her to the floor, letting her wake just enough to do it all over again … three times, maybe four … with the peculiar sadism of a kid pulling wings off flies before crushing them underfoot. He would wait for her to surface, regain consciousness, all the better to feel the instant his teeth clamped onto her throat and tore and her blood fountained to bathe his cheeks a bright, stinging red.
From … somewhere … there came a hard bang that might have been sharper and louder but for the cotton stuffing her ears. An instant later, Acne let out a sudden, sickening ungh, and the pressure around her neck was gone. Why, she didn’t know. Something scraped her back. Wood, the wall—I’m falling. Hacking, she landed in a heap, limp as wet laundry. For a few seconds all she concentrated on was dragging air through a throat that felt as stable as the crushed stem of a tulip.
Through the blur that passed for her vision, she saw them: Wolf and Acne, across the room, facing off. The air in the cabin had quickened, popping and crackling with heat, the acrid sting of murder, the cold steel of Wolf’s rage. Blood trickled from Acne’s nose, and he was shaking his head like a bull. Crouching, eyes narrowed, Wolf began to circle. Acne tried to follow, but he was either still stunned from Wolf’s first punch or simply weakened by lack of food, because he stumbled. Seizing his chance, Wolf ducked and charged. Dazed, Acne actually backed up and tried a sidestep, but not fast enough. Plowing into Acne, Wolf wrapped his arms around the other boy’s waist and gave a mighty heave. Acne’s legs flew out from under as Wolf upended and then smashed him to the floor. Acne’s head rebounded against wood with a sharp crack. His limbs went limp, the connections between brain and body winking out as Wolf dropped like a boulder on top of him. He brought his fist down like a hammer, once, twice—
A huge roar shook the cabin. From her place on the floor, Alex saw Marley, long dreads still frosty from cold, swinging the Mossberg’s muzzle from the ceiling and bringing it to bear on the two boys. Wolf and Acne froze in an almost comical tableau: Wolf astride Acne’s chest, his bloody fist cocked for another blow. Acne’s eyes were swelling and purpling in a mask of blood. Combined with all those acne scars, the boy looked as if his skin was being chewed from the inside out. His chest was a broad bib of red. With every breath, blood bubbled through his shattered nose.
To Marley’s left were the brothers, Bert and Ernie. From the smell drifting out of that green duffel slung over Bert’s shoulder, she knew that the woman was frail and birdy, wreathed in a fruity bouquet of starvation, with very little meat. Look at it a certain way, maybe Wolf and his crew had only done the birdy woman a favor, in the same way that sheriffs shot deer too weak to even realize they’d wandered into the middle of the road during a hard winter. If, that is, you really could see things from the Changed’s point of view.
It scared her, a little, that she could.
Wolf didn’t kill Acne, and neither did any in his crew. What they did was send Acne packing. Curled in a corner, throat aching, cheek throbbing, Alex kept still as Acne, moving very slowly and stiffly, rolled up his sleeping bag under Wolf’s watchful eye and Marley’s Mossberg.
Don’t notice me. She hugged her knees a little closer. Don’t see me. I’m not here. Fat chance of that. Through it all, she thought about the monster: that jump behind Acne’s eyes, Wolf’s sudden appearance. It was possible that Wolf was close by anyway, and banged through the door just in time. But just as likely that the monster had
something to do with this, same as when I was under the snow. Now as then, she’d been teetering on the edge of consciousness, and the monster panicked. Wouldn’t be the first time, and what the hell was she going to do about that? What could she do?
Got to think of something; got to keep the monster under control. Her face throbbed. She thought about her med pack. Might be something for pain. No, stay sharp; it’s when you start to lose it that the monster gets out. She sucked blood from a tear on her lower lip. I can take this. Besides, I really ought to save that stuff for when we need it.
Only after another second did she truly hear what she’d just thought: We?
Stop it, Alex; you’re going to drive yourself crazy. For want of anything better to do, she watched as Bert grabbed that green duffel, pulled it up, gave the nylon bag a shake. The birdy woman’s body slithered out in a loose-limbed splay like a limp, white, plucked chicken. After Bert smoothed the duffel on the floor, Ernie rolled the body onto the sack, then pulled a well-used knife, with a fine and silvery edge, from a leg sheath and went to work.
Don’t look, Alex. Fighting the sting of tears, she dropped her head on her knees. The air bloomed with wet iron, raw meat, fresh bone. Hell with the monster. You’re Alex. You’ll always be Alex, no matter what …
She felt the suck of cold air as the door closed behind Acne. A moment later, she heard hesitant footsteps coming toward her. Even before he knelt—before she felt his tentative hand in her hair—she knew who it was. For a moment, she didn’t move, but not because she was afraid.
She didn’t move because—God help her—she wasn’t scared of him. At all.
Wolf’s rage, that steel bite, was gone. What remained was rot and mist, gassy flesh and crisp apples, and for a second, she surrendered to a very simple, basic need. For her, at that moment, even the touch of a monster would do.
I am so scared. All at once, she was crying, silently, shoulders shuddering. Angry at herself, too. Stop this, stop this … no one will rescue you but you. No one else can. Yet here was Wolf, and she wasn’t fighting this, or him. Maybe she should. But she was so worn out. She felt his hand move through her hair, very gently, quite carefully, as if he were trying not to hurt her more than she was already. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me. But she wanted this, craved it—a touch that was not a blow—and she thought that meant she was pretty far gone. She let his fingers travel over her uninjured cheek, felt his thumb skim away her tears, trace her jaw. When he lifted her chin, she didn’t fight that either.
Wolf’s face—Chris’s face—was very still. Watchful. Trying to … understand, she thought. His dark eyes were riveted to hers, as if trying to see behind these windows to her mind. His scent was hard to read, but it was light and floral, the smell of safe and family. There might even be a smidgeon of pity there, or sympathy.
“Please let me go, Wolf.” She winced against a stinging swallow of salt. “Don’t you see? I don’t belong with you. I’m not one of you.”
Nothing changed in his scent. Maybe nothing could because he couldn’t understand, or didn’t want to. But his thumb kept stroking her cheek the way you might comfort a small child or lost kitten. Right around then, she realized she wasn’t crying anymore either.
What type of monster are you, Wolf? It was a question she could’ve asked herself. What was she now? What lived in her head that could do these things: jump behind Acne’s eyes, slide into Spider, slither into Leopard?
Reach for Wolf?
The monster wants him. Because she did? No, not like that, never. Whatever the monster was doing, its needs were its own; she had to believe that, or she might as well use the tanto on herself.
But … what if I can use the monster somehow? Her mind brushed that idea, lightly, not lingering, a touch that was as gentle as Wolf’s on her cheek. What if I can control when and how the monster jumps? Or maybe let the monster try to reach Wolf, talk to him? Just let go and get into Wolf and see myself the way he really sees me—
“What?” Abruptly, she sat up. “What the hell are you thinking, Alex?” Her voice came out angry, and that was something Wolf understood, because she saw him flinch, felt his hand fall away from her face.
“I’m going outside.” She wasn’t going to run—she wasn’t stupid—but she had to get out of this miserable little room with its smells of death and Changed. Walking the wall with her hands, she made her feet. For a moment, she thought Wolf would try to help. “Don’t,” she said, flattening herself against cold wood. “Leave me alone. I don’t want—”
She stopped talking then, the words turning to dust in her mouth as she saw Bert, just beyond, coming toward her.…
With dinner.
The arm was spindly. It was the right. Not tons of meat. Tattered remnants of skin and ropy veins dragged over the pinkish knob of the birdy woman’s funny bone; and—oh God—the slim steel band of a watch was still tight around that twig of a wrist.
Something seemed to snap in her head. She stared at the arm, horrified—and yet she was so hungry that this thought actually bubbled to the surface: If there’s no other choice; if it’s life or death …
“No!” Grabbing back a scream, she bullied her way past Wolf and Bert. Clawing open the cabin door, she stumbled into the bronze dazzle of a sunset. The cold was stunning, like blundering through glass, but she couldn’t stay in that cabin another second. Of course, the Changed would feed; they had to eat. But I do have a choice. After a half dozen yards, her knees unlimbered—just plain gave out—and she toppled to the snow. She dug in until her face and neck and bare hands flinched with the cold. Eventually, she would feel the burn, which was fine.
Burn my eyes out, take a blowtorch to my brain, anything. She dragged her head from side to side like a dog trying to get a bad smell out of its snout. I can’t go down that road. I do that, then I might as well have eaten Jack and snacked on those kids—or let the monster out all the way.
No matter what Wolf was thinking, what he wanted, she had to fight. Can’t give in, can’t go there. Behind, she heard the cabin’s door open; felt his eyes, knew his scent. He only watched, though, and didn’t follow.
I’m me. Ahead, by the shed, she saw that strange mound. I’m me, I’m Alex. She battled her way there, slithering through snow until the mound loomed. She knelt before it, sweeping her eyes over patchy snow—and spied a dark pinprick scurry over a patch of ice. And another pinprick, and another. And another.
Fight.
She thrust both fists into the mound, right up to her wrists. Almost at once and despite the cold, a black tide boiled to the surface and over her forearms. Withdrawing a hand, she inspected her fingers, smeary with dirt and so many ants her skin was a black, writhing mat. Many carried eggs and tiny, milky larvae clamped in their mandibles.
Do it, Alex. Just do it. Hang on to who you are. Don’t let them break you.
Before her brain could really kick in and stop her, she stuck two fingers into her mouth and sucked. Ants foamed over her tongue. She tasted dirt, the coarse pop of grit and the yeasty tang of fermenting earth; felt the spidery scampering of many legs, the minute pricking of mandibles nipping at her flesh—but she bit down and killed them all and swallowed them back and went back for seconds. And thirds.
Because, yes: things were that bad.
40
“Sarah, I know things are bad. That weird earthquake spooked everyone—” Greg broke off as Tori, with Ghost in tow, bustled into the church’s main office. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, what took you so long?” Pru had parked his butt on a desk still heaped with stacks of Xeroxed announcements for October 2. Given that they were at the end of the first week of March of the following year, an Amish Friendship Bread and Whoopie Pie church bake sale scheduled for October 8 last year was probably moot. “Cutter and Benton’ll be back in less than twenty minutes, and Greg and me have to be gone. A couple cans of refried beans only buy you so much time.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Caleb’s pretty sick.�
� Tori backhanded honey-blond frizz from her forehead as Alex’s gangly Weimaraner made a beeline for a muscular black German shepherd curled at Sarah’s feet. “Honestly,” Tori said, “if one more kid decides to chow down on play-dough, I’m going to throw it all out.”
Greg made a face. “Play-Doh? That stuff stinks.”
“Not the homemade stuff. The little kids made it back when we actually had flour. Looks and smells like bread dough. Really salty, though.” Propping her shotgun, a Remington 870 with a carved floral design on the walnut stock, in a corner, Tori said, “Then I had to shake Becky. She wanted to know if I was going to see you.”
“What? How’d she find out?” Greg blurted. At the dart of dismay in Tori’s eyes, he wanted to kick himself. When the girls lived with Jess, he’d drunk so much tea just to be near Tori, he could’ve floated his own battleship. After Alex’s escape and the ambush, the Council moved Tori and Sarah into the church’s rectory. That should’ve made things a little easier, especially since the girls’ housemother, a lumbering hag named Hammerbach, keeled over from a stroke. But he always seemed to say the wrong thing.
“Becky saw me unlock the choir door while I was sweeping the basement. She was under the altar, playing hide-and-seek, she said. But I think she was scoping out the pantry. A couple kids tried to break in yesterday.”
“Because they’re starving.” A tiny girl to begin with, Sarah had shriveled. At her right hip, a holstered Sig P225 jutted like a black knucklebone. Greg wondered if she even knew how to fire the thing. She turned Greg a hollow stare. “You can only live on watered-down oatmeal, corn syrup, peanut butter, and the occasional acorn for so long. We’ve already lost seven kids. Another few weeks, they’re going to start really dropping like the old people.”
“Without their pills, those old guys were going to kick anyway,” Pru said. “Nothing Kincaid can do about that either. Get pneumonia, kiss it good-bye. Going to be big trouble.”
“We’re already in deep trouble.” Sarah spooled a listless curl around a finger. “Why do you think they moved all of us Spared to the center of town? We get a little more to eat than everyone else. But they might as well paint a bull’s-eye on our backs.”