by Morris, Kate
“What are you doing?” Jane asked and did as he said.
“We start at the anus,” he explained and didn’t even glance up because what he was about to do would make her go pale.
He inserted the knife that he’d taken from her father’s supply of hunting materials in the basement and cut in a vertical line.
“You have to be careful not to cut the intestines or stomach,” he told them. “Their skin isn’t that thick, so it’s easy to cut through with the right knife.”
Everything his father taught him came flooding back as he inserted two fingers under the hide after the grayish intestines flopped into view. Sliding the knife along the route his fingers took, Roman carefully cut the animal open until he was to the heart and lungs.
“There’s a membrane up here that holds stuff together and in place. Don’t know what it’s called. Sorry,” he apologized and felt around for it in the cavity. “Got it. Now, you just cut it loose. If I did it right, everything will fall out after this.”
And it did. The lungs first, then the heart, the gut, and intestines. It was gruesome work, but they needed food. He wasn’t about to let Jane and Connor die from starvation.
“I’m gonna hurl,” Wren said and jogged away.
“Yeah, like I said,” Roman reaffirmed.
“It’s okay, Roman,” Jane eased him. “We need to learn.”
“Well, that’s it. We can haul it back to the house now. We can process it in your dad’s shed. When we first got there, he told me where he used to do it.”
“I think I’ll try my hand at gutting the other if that’s okay with you,” Spencer said.
“Yeah, good idea,” Roman agreed and stood.
They walked over to the second buck as Wren joined them again.
“You okay?” he asked her, noting her slightly paler skin. He only got a nod.
Spencer and Jane took turns on the next deer, and he was surprised she didn’t throw up when she stuck her hand up into the body cavity to find the membrane.
They used the snow to clean their hands a little, and Spencer passed around a rag he had in his backpack to dry them. Roman was worried that her hands would be too cold, but she didn’t complain.
“I’ll carry one,” Spencer volunteered. “Help me get it up on my shoulders?”
Wren stepped forward to do that while Roman grabbed the feet of the other deer.
“I’ll help,” Jane rushed forward as it began to snow.
The deer weren’t too heavy, but getting up and down those hills would be tough. It didn’t matter. They needed the meat. He wasn’t even sure how much they’d get out of these two deer.
The snow began falling heavier to the point that it became difficult to see their way through the woods. He and Spencer both slipped and fell a few times going down the hills, but Jane helped him back up. He felt bad because her arms were probably getting tired, too, since she was carrying her rifle and his, as well, while Wren toted Spencer’s.
It took three times longer to get back to the four-wheelers than it did walking out to find deer to hunt, but they eventually got there. They tied the carcasses onto the back rack with twine they found in the barn that Roman was pretty sure was for baling hay.
“What a damn mess!” Maureen ranted angrily, startling them all.
“Geeze!” Jane exclaimed. “You scared us!”
“What the hell, Jane?” she asked.
“Who are you?” Wren asked warily.
Jane made fast, brief introductions.
“Where were you?” she asked her mother.
“Out,” she answered without giving any useful information.
Roman looked up by the house and noticed a Chevy Tahoe sitting there now. Jane was right. She clearly knew her mother very well.
“We were hunting,” Jane said.
Maureen laughed obnoxiously and took a bite of an apple. “Get real. Where’s my old man?”
“My father is resting.”
“When he gets up, tell his lazy ass I wanna’ see him.”
“Not until he’s better, Maureen,” Jane stated firmly and turned her back on her mother to help him secure their load. Roman noticed that Maureen’s eyes flashed. At first, she seemed angry, and then something else, almost like she was proud, which would probably not be right from what Jane had told him of her worthless mother. “You can stay here until he’s better.”
“Uh-huh. I heard you the first time,” she said as if irritated. “What am I supposed to do with all these dead crawlers?”
“We’ll be back either tonight or tomorrow to haul them away,” Spencer told her, to which she rolled her eyes.
“Some place you’ve got me stuck at, Jane,” she complained.
“Better than where you just came from,” Jane returned.
“Do you need more food?” Roman asked her mother to stave off what seemed like a fight brewing. He noticed she had a shotgun with a sling over her left shoulder. Jane told him she’d come unarmed and that she hadn’t given her mother a weapon.
She snorted, “No. I can take care of myself. I have quite a lot now, actually.”
“You looted somewhere, you mean,” Jane speculated.
Maureen just laughed and walked away towards the house. She was a pretty woman, obviously where Jane got it. However, there was such a hardness about her that she seemed like stone, like black granite. Instead of Jane’s light brown hair, hers was darker, nearly black but with a few gray streaks. They shared the same shade of hazel eyes, though. On Jane, they seemed warm and kind. With the contrast of her mother’s darker hair, they seemed glacial. She was nearly as thin as Jane but considerably taller. He guessed if she flexed a muscle, it’d feel like sinewy steel. Roman hoped he never had to tangle with this woman. She was just a woman, but she certainly wasn’t weak, neither physically and definitely not mentally. She’d likely crush him.
“Let’s get back,” Spencer said. “We need to get these butchered before dark tonight.”
“Agreed,” Roman said with a nod and started up his machine.
Spencer and Wren took the lead out the lane and started them toward home. The snow was blotting out what little sun had hinted at coming out today. It was difficult to see their way and find their tracks from earlier on this road already. The sun had come up, taken one look around as if it, too, were pissed about the current state of affairs on earth and retreated again. Now, it could’ve been dusk but was only a few hours past dawn. The snow was blowing sideways, hitting them in the face in a painful way. They needed ski masks, but none of them was wearing one.
As they rounded a particularly severe corner, Jane screamed. She screamed too late. The lead ATV was hit by something. It was taken over and plummeted off the road. The machine and its riders slid, careened, and rolled down a ravine. It was taken down by a night crawler that had bolted out of the woods, coming off the bank beside the road and launching itself onto them. Their friends were gone. That thing was probably after their fresh haul of deer meat. Or them. Or both. They weren’t reasonable humans anymore. He couldn’t even see Spencer and Wren through the snow, but Roman did hear the victorious howl of the thing that took them down as if it was crying out its enacted vengeance against them. He had a bad feeling it was the one that he’d let get away back at the barn.
Chapter Eighteen
Tristan
“Oh, my God!” Avery gasped as she locked eyes on what he’d seen first. “Oh, oh, oh. Tristan!”
On the damp, dirty, and mildew-covered cement floor in the cold, abandoned hoarder home, a young girl, maybe a teenager or thereabouts, was handcuffed to a metal gas line pipe coming out of the wall. She was wearing pale purple panties and a blue tank top. Her feet were bare and filthy. Her long dark hair a tangled mess.
“Tristan, help her!” Avery ordered him.
“Avery, stay back!” he shouted and restrained her from passing him. Just because doctors said the people who’d recovered from the flu couldn’t get it again didn’t mean he believed that
scientific hypothesis one hundred percent. “She could be infected.”
“Young lady?” Avery asked. “Miss? Are you okay?”
The girl jumped as if fearful and balled up even tighter in her squatted position.
Tristan asked when she didn’t respond other than shivering or perhaps trembling in fear, “Are you sick?”
She shook her head quickly. “No.”
Her voice was raspy. He stepped cautiously forward.
“Tristan,” Avery pleaded softly.
“To hell with it,” he swore.
Tristan rushed forward and squatted. The girl flinched and cried out in fear. She was blindfolded, so he removed it slowly. She squinted and blinked hard a few times.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We won’t hurt you.”
Her big brown eyes stared up at him with such fear that Tristan wasn’t sure she even understood him.
“Are you infected?” he asked again. “Do you have the infection, the RF2?”
The girl shook her head.
“You’re safe now,” Avery said, trying to reassure her.
The girl still cowered from them, trying to shrink and possibly disappear into the concrete block wall behind her.
“I don’t have a handcuff key,” he told Avery as he fumbled with trying to pick the lock. “Wait here with her.”
He rushed back up the steps to tell the others, who were both also horrified by the discovery. Kaia brushed past him.
“Kaia, try to find her some clothes,” he told her and got a nod from Avery’s sister.
Alex rummaged the garage with him, and together, they found bolt cutters. They’d have to do until they could get her out of here and back to their house. He’d figure out how to get them off of her once they were there. It made Tristan realize how underequipped they were to deal with things. He had carried a set of bolt cutters in the truck on most days, but they were using Renee’s truck today. All of them should also know a way of getting out of cuffs, ties, and duct tape. They had so much work to do.
Once he had the cuffs cut at the chain connecting them around the pipe, she slumped as if her arms were exhausted from being in that position for a long time.
“Who did this to you?” he asked the girl.
She stared at his middle instead of looking him in the eye.
“A man, a disgusting man,” she said. “There were others.”
“Others?” Avery quickly asked.
The girl nodded.
“Other men?”
She nodded, “And girls. Not just me.”
“Where are they, sweetie?” Avery questioned.
She lifted a skinny finger attached to an equally slender arm and pointed toward a door in the corner.
“They’re tied up in there?” Tristan asked and brought his rifle back around to the front of him, which caused her eyes to widen at the sight of the gun. Then she shook her head. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes dropped to the floor, where she was still sitting. Kaia was missing her jacket, which she’d wrapped around the girl, who was still just wearing her panties. They must not have found pants for her.
“They didn’t make it.”
“Explain that,” he said quickly, wanting to be away from this place as soon as possible.
“Two were infected. The other two…” she shook her head, sending tangled brown hair over her shoulder.
Avery asked more patiently, “Sweetie, what do you mean? What happened here?”
Tristan interrupted and said, “Avery, stay here.”
He pulled his mask a little higher and went to the door on the other side of the basement, where he paused for a few extra moments before turning the knob. Without the electricity working, he was forced to switch on his small flashlight to see better because the room was pitch dark. Tristan stepped past the threshold, and even though he was wearing his mask, the stench made him almost gag. He found the other girls immediately because they were lying there, disposed of carelessly, maybe dragged or carried over, and just dumped in the room. It was so disrespectful, such hideous treatment of the dead that Tristan felt a rage boiling within him. Three girls were white, the fourth one black. All in varying stages of decomposition, but none in full clothing. One was even stark naked. He backed out and shut the door again.
“Let’s go,” he barked a little too loudly. He amended it with a softer, “Now.”
Kaia and Avery aided the frail girl in getting up, for which he was thankful because Tristan was pretty sure this girl wouldn’t have appreciated his help. They were met upstairs at the back door by Alex, who was clearly stunned.
“We better get what we’re gettin’,” Alex said. “It’s snowing like hell again. You know they came out again the other day when it was doing this shit.”
“Yeah, let’s move,” Tristan said.
“She needs shoes,” Avery said, halting him in the door as he prepared to leave. “The snow’s too deep to go barefoot.”
He looked around, looked through the grime and the mildew and wondered if anything from this house of horrors would be suitable for her feet anyway. His frustration was growing. The need to get away from this place felt imperative.
“I’ll just carry her,” Alex offered, stepped forward, and she shrank back into Avery.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Avery assured her.
“Let me have your gun,” Kaia said and extended her hand as Alex readily handed it over.
He stepped toward the girl, who stepped back again and almost fell over Tristan. Then she jumped.
“Easy, girl,” Tristan said. “We’re getting you the hell outta’ here. We’re not going to hurt you. We have a safe place.”
She shook her head rapidly and said, “He’ll be back. He’s…evil…”
“Who?”
“Probably that piece of shit outside that you killed,” Alex said, causing her head to jerk toward him.
“Y-you k-killed him?”
“I don’t know,” Tristan told her and nodded to Alex.
The guy stepped in and swooped the half-naked girl into his arms. She didn’t protest, but she did go stiff as a board.
“It’s okay,” Alex tried to assure her. “I got you.”
“Let’s run by the liar,” Tristan said. “Make sure we got a positive i.d. on him.”
They left the house, none worried about closing the door behind them. As they approached the dead man’s body, Alex turned so that she could see him.
“Is that him?”
She cringed and shook her head. “No, he’s the one who came with the food and water. I think he forgot. He hasn’t been here for three days.”
“Son of a bitch,” Tristan swore and wanted to shoot the piece of shit again. “Is he the one who had you locked down there?”
She shook her head again. “No, not him. Another.”
“Let’s get outta here right now,” Tristan announced. “You got her?”
“I got her,” Alex said with confidence.
“Move it,” Tristan told them all in a fierce whisper.
He had a bad feeling about this place. People were dead, girls probably victimized, a liar who was supposed to be managing the operation or whatever this was, and someone else in charge who wasn’t around. This was not a good position to be in, so he rushed the group back to the truck.
Avery asked, “What about the chickens?”
“I don’t think he had any to negotiate,” Tristan revealed as he hit the unlock button on the key fob. They all piled in, Alex setting the girl in the back with the other two. Then he climbed into the front.
Avery asked him, “What do you mean?”
“He was a liar,” Tristan explained as he worked on getting the truck turned around in the tight space without going too far off the lane since he wasn’t sure what was underneath the snow. Screwing up like that once was enough to last him through this apocalypse. Plus, Alex was right to be worried. The snow was getting heavier, which meant it was getting darker again. If there were any of
those freaks in the area, they could come out, cause problems. “I doubt there were chickens or anything else to trade.”
“They ate all the chickens,” the girl said quietly.
“Tristan, turn up the heat,” Avery requested, to which he complied, even though his adrenaline was pumping and making him hot and stuffy. The girl had no damn shoes on, though. Or pants or much of anything else.
“We’re not far from home,” he reminded them. “Hang on back there.”
“What do you mean they ate the chickens?” Avery asked her. “Who?”
“The men. They ate them,” she answered, although Tristan was sure that nobody else understood, either. There would be plenty of time to figure it all out later. For now, he just wanted to get them home safely.
The road was getting treacherous again as he rounded a sharp curve and slid. The truck held onto the road, and he was able to keep going. It didn’t take long before they were back to the house, the truck struggling to stay on the driveway that he just plowed the other day when the last storm hit.
The kids came out to greet them, and Alex carried the girl inside, garnering a lot of curious stares.
“Wait here,” Tristan told her and rushed away. When he came back, he was carrying a Bobby pin from the kitchen and wiggled it for the others to see. It took him a few minutes, but he was able to pick the lock. Then she was free. Her poor little wrists were bruised and red.
“Kaia, why don’t you take our guest back to your bathroom and help her. Let her take a shower and give her some clothing, dearest,” Avery ordered. Then she turned to the girl. “You’re safe here, darling. Nobody will ever hurt you here. I want you to get cleaned up so that I can check you for injuries, okay? Just take a nice long hot shower and try to relax.”
The girl that seemed so weak and tired simply offered a single nod.
“I’ll help her,” Kaia agreed, dropping her coat onto the entryway bench and dumping her wet boots on the floor. Avery stowed them away where they belonged.
“I feel terrible,” she said, turning to him.
“The girl?” he asked.
“We don’t even know her name,” she admitted with a soft frown.