* * *
Chris walks into the clearing around the Picket Fence. Remy is there—just as she had been earlier when he watched her and Austin from his hiding place. Her arm flashes away from her and the knife spins through the air. The point strikes the last Guardian, the younger of the two females, high up on the chest, near the left collarbone.
“What are you doing?”
Remy spins around and faces him. “I’ve had a really bad day.” Her voice is raspy and low, the results of almost being strangled to death by Austin. He should say something to her about it because it’s something he shouldn’t know about, but before he can mention it, she steps toward him, brandishing another knife. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me the fuck alone.”
Her knife is inches from his face but suddenly her eyes turn down, sensing movement. Slowly, Chris raises the machete between them. The blade catches a glint of sunlight and reflects it onto her face, into her eye, making her squint.
Chris leans toward her, deliberately pressing the tip of her blade against his cheek. Voice like ice, he says, “Your little knife might prick my skin… might make me bleed, just a little. But this one…” He twists the machete slightly, reminding her of its sharp presence. “… it’ll chop your fucking head off.”
Remy backs away but still holds the knife up between them.
He nods to the blade in her hand. “Where’d you get those?”
She shrugs, “I have my secrets… I’m sure you have yours too.”
“I don’t have any secrets.”
She looks him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. “No, you’re right. You don’t have any secrets, do you?” She spins on her heel and walks toward the Guardian, but turns her head to talk over her shoulder. “But I’m sure your dad still does.” She grips the knife handle—the Guardian's teeth are inches away from her hand but she does not flinch away.
Chris steps forward. “What did you say?”
“Your sweet daddy… you know, the man who taught you how to survive out here? How many secrets did he hide from you?” Still, her hand remains on the knife as the Guardian grunts and groans, becoming more agitated at Remy’s closeness.
Chris is stunned silent, mind turning to the hidden box, the red one with the family photographs.
“Tell me, Chris! How many secrets did your daddy keep from you? Have you found them all—how about this fucking fence. Have you really ever taken a good look at it?”
Chris takes another step toward her. Is she talking about the river below her, cutting an ever-widening tunnel through Homestead?
“You still don’t know why he hid that box from you, do you?” She rips the knife free, slicing through the thin strap of blouse over the Guardian’s shoulder. The fabric falls away, revealing an emaciated ribcage with flat nubs for breasts. Remy focuses on Chris’s face then shakes her head. “Clueless,” she says. “Your father was a masochist fucker.”
She turns away and heads toward the gate. Seeing her walking away helps him free his voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Why don’t you look for yourself,” she shouts. She winces against the pressure on her throat. She slams the gate and the fence rocks with the force. But she’s not done. The knife has changed position in her hand. She raises it high above her head and stabs downward, driving the blade into the back of the Guardian’s skull.
“No!” Chris shouts, rushing forward. He’s too late. The young Guardian’s head lulls forward, chin resting against its breastbone—the knife hilt points an angry finger to the sky, as if showing where to place the blame for its death. Chris falls to his knees in front of the corpse. The Guardians have protected him for years and the only thing to take them away so far has been the river. He never thought of them as anything other than protection, but now that one has been taken away so suddenly, so violently, he feels as if a part of him is gone too. The burst of emotion is daunting, hitting him in the gut in much the same way as pains of hunger.
Chris raises his head. A thick stream of black goo oozes from the killing blow to the Guardian's skull and drips from its brow onto its tiny breast. A twisted, grimy braid hugs the thing's neck. Chris has seen the braid before—he always thought it was a thin piece of rope, but on closer inspection, he sees that it is actually linking segments of tarnished metal. He lifts up onto his knees, bringing the chain around the Guardian’s neck to eye level.
“What the…” He pulls away the blouse. Hanging suspended between her breasts is a heart-shaped locket.
* * *
Austin stokes the fire, causing the glowing coals to flare to new life. He adds a few logs and settles down onto the mattress to eat another strip of deer jerky. He’s so hungry he’s almost eaten half the bag. He should put the rest away—may not be any food tomorrow and he might need it.
The sun is still more than an hour from setting but he’s so tired he can’t help but lie back to rest. If he falls asleep then that’s fine. Maybe his sleep will be filled with good dreams tonight, instead of reliving the horrors of his past and the different variations his mind has created. He empties his mind and pretends that he is floating on a boat—something that he used to do as a child. His dad would take him fishing, but even though Austin never liked the sport, he enjoyed lying on his back in the bottom of the boat, eyes turned to the blue sky, listening to the gentle waves lapping against the boat's aluminum sides.
There is no blue sky in this new world. Just the smoky gray ceiling above him—that and the rough drawing of a woman in a dress.
Austin scrambles to his feet, eyes turned to the low ceiling. That wasn’t there before. And there’s a word, written in all capital letters, under the figure, but from his vantage point, the image is upside down. he takes a step forward, turns around, and slowly, the four-letter word takes form.
Austin speaks the word aloud, a questioning mixture of wonder and confusion.
“Remy.”
He reaches up and touches the black markings. His fingers come away coated with a black chalky substance. He smells his fingers—soot.
Examining the drawing a little closer, he sees that what at first looked like hurried artistic flares of expression are actually intentional. Between the figure's head and neck is an empty space about the thickness of his thumb, giving the picture the appearance that the head is detached from the body. However, around the neck are long lines of black. Each one radiates outward and ends in a bulbous glob twice as thick as the line.
“Blood,” says Austin. “Remy… blood.” He turns and streaks toward the door, forgetting all about his hunger and weakness, forgetting that the woman he loathes is about to receive just what she deserves—all he knows at that moment is the only person he knows on this entire planet is going to die.
* * *
Chris rushes through the gate, down the path to the hut, and bursts through the door, making a beeline for the red plastic box. It slips out of his grasp and falls, spilling pictures across the dirt floor. He fumbles through them, looking for the portrait of his family, the one with the bloody thumbprint covering his father’s face. He spots it and snatches it up but can’t make out any details. The sun is an hour away from setting but the hut’s interior is already dark.
He turns, glancing about the cluttered room, realizing that Remy is not here. He steps outside and examines the photograph, running his thumb over the image of his sister. It stops just under her chin but above her sternum, where the heart-shaped locket hangs from a gold chain.
He whispers, “Oh my God. Father… what did you do?”
“I told you…”
Chris’s head jerks up. Remy had just rounded the corner of the hut brandishing her throwing knives, one in each hand. Contempt and hatred burn from her eyes and Chris instinctively steps away from her. Then he realizes that he’s made a grave mistake—he left the machete by the Guardians.
* * *
Austin’s feet are hammers pounding the ground with each step. He’s covered half the distance
to the peninsula where Remy has made her home these past several months, but he’s beginning to feel the hunger and weakness all over again. His calves scream with each step. Muscles in his back spasm and threaten to bring him to the ground—the jerky he ate earlier… the protein already digested and absorbed, leaving a hole in his stomach, aching to be refilled.
With every step, the urgency he felt back at the house fades. He’d be better off without Remy—he knows it’s true. He can’t survive on his own though. He’s big, strong, and intimidating—but that only works against the living. The dead don’t care one way or the other. To them, he’s just flesh, eaten then discarded.
With these thoughts rattling through his head, he continues on, running through the trees, ducking branches, sidestepping thick brush, and leaping brittle, rotting logs.
He runs like the wind, seeming to barely touch the ground with one foot before it lifts for the next step. He doesn’t notice the trees. He doesn’t notice the fallen logs. He doesn’t notice that the natural sounds of the forest—the songs of birds, the machine-gun fire of woodpeckers, the occasional whip-poor-will, or the constant crackling of wind through the leaves. Neither does he notice that in the midst of the heavy forest, more than a dozen wavering, stumbling corpses turn to follow his passage.
* * *
Chris backpedals from Remy and her knives. He’s seen her use them a couple of times now and knows that she isn’t completely proficient in throwing them, but he’s not willing to take the chance. He holds up his hands but she doesn’t pause, following him step for step.
She opens her mouth, her words bleeding venomous poison. “I’ve felt the tension between us these past few days and I realized something…”
“Oh,” says Chris, thinking that he just needs to keep her talking. “What’s that?”
As he continues to skirt around the north-west corner of the hut, he lets his hand glide over the wall, hoping that it will wonder upon something he can use. He tries to remember some of the items his father collected over the years and decorated across almost every surface of the hut: lengths of chain, blades from farming equipment, glass bottles…
Then it hits him—he knows what he can use. Now he just has to keep her talking so he can make it to the next corner.
She follows him around. Her right hand rises to the wall. She trails the knife’s point along the surface, leaving a thin yellow scar in the wood. It makes a high-pitched squealing when it contacts metal or glass. The sound sends shivers up Chris’s spine.
“I hate your weakness, your insecurity. You might look like a man, but you’re nothing more than a little boy in a man’s body.” She speaks in a singsong cadence, and with each beat, she stabs the knife into the hut.
Then her voice grows quiet, menacing. “I saw you earlier… hiding in the fucking bushes like a spying child.”
Chris almost pauses, allowing Remy to catch up to him. So far, he’s maintained a safe distance. She could throw the knives like she’s been practicing, but he’d rather take the chance that he can duck out of the way than risk her stabbing or slicing at him. He remembers the events earlier in the day—Remy throwing the knives, the appearance of Austin, the choking, and her storming off through the Picket Fence and back toward the hut. She must have seen him when she returned. Austin would have been almost directly between them both—that’s when she saw him, it has to be.
“So what?” he asks. He’s made it halfway down the hut’s north wall. Just a few more feet.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she says, “Stop.” She lifts the knife in her left hand, but not to the point where Chris believes she’ll throw it. She holds it in front of her and not over her shoulder, near her ear as he’s seen her do. “I said, stop.”
“Why, so you can stab me?”
“No different than what you probably have planned for me.”
Chris takes another step. “And how do you know what my plans are?”
Another step, which puts him three or four steps from the corner of the house. She lifts the knife up another inch, but still not enough where Chris believes it’s a danger.
“I’ve seen the way you look at me. You loathe me just about as much as I hate you.”
Chris is almost at the corner now. There’s no reason for him to shy away from her now. She’s right, he’s worn his feelings for her in plain view—if not through his words, then most certainly through his attitude and body language. He reaches around the corner and his fingers immediately latch onto the object that might just save his life.
He chooses that moment to unload on her, to let loose of all the rage that he’s held pent up inside him since the day he met her. His voice booms like thunder in a storm, his words burning sharp like lightning. Around the corner, he carefully lifts the object from the rusted nail that holds it in place. “You’re right… I never really knew hate until I met you. That first day when you tried to leave me to the Tainted… taking my innocence…”
She interjects, “You enjoyed that and you know it.”
“Yes, sure. At the time I did… but afterward I felt as if you’d taken something from me… taken a part of me that I can never get back.”
“And what about all the other times?” Spittle flies from her lips with her hissing words.
“Each and every time, I wanted to crush you… to drive my body through you… to pound you into a bloody pulp. I wanted to choke you to death… to watch the life drain from your eyes.”
“So why didn’t you?”
She takes another step toward him but he stands his ground, he has to tell her this last part. Hidden from view, his fingers clench the item he’s taken from the wall, ready to bring it around at a moment’s notice and throw it at Remy.
He says, “I didn’t do it because it would have made me no better than you—and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I refuse to stoop to your level.”
Her eyes narrow and two things happen simultaneously. He sees the change in her eyes and realizes that her lift hand is quickly rising to her ear. Just before she throws the knife, he ducks and spins around the corner.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” she hollers, as the knife goes spinning through the empty space where he stood just a second ago.
Even with taking her by surprise and getting a head start, he doesn’t believe he can make it to the next corner before she rounds it. She’ll have a perfect target of his fleeing back. Instead, he takes three quick steps then turns, prepared to throw the object in his hand just as she emerges.
Chris holds his breath and feels his heart beat once, then twice… Remy doesn’t appear. When she still doesn’t round the edge of the building he moves cautiously forward and peers around the corner.
Remy’s not there.
“Oh, shit,” Chris says and spins around.
* * *
Austin has to stop. The hitch in his side burns, the muscles in his back tremor and spasm, and if feels as if a thousand needles pierce his calf muscles. He comes to a stumbling halt and leans against a branch of a newly fallen tree, his chest rising and falling with every breath.
He’s close to the trail now. It can’t be more than five or ten minutes away. He slams his fist against the rough tree bark. How can someone so big and strong still be so weak? He hits the tree again, the force bruising his knuckles. The third punch splits the skin.
He still can’t understand why he cares whether or not Remy lives or dies. He examines his hand, watching a bead of blood slip between the valley of his middle and ring fingers. The strip of split skin fascinates him and he realizes that he can’t remember the last time he’s seen his own blood. Is that all we are, he thinks—just blood and skin and a thought or two? These are things that are beyond his comprehension to understand, but he can’t help but ponder on them.
Austin stands and stretches his legs. His breathing has slowed and his heart is no longer trying to shudder loose within his chest. The twinge in his back is still there but it’s a recurring debilitation—something that wo
n’t relieve itself unless he takes it easy for a while.
He grabs a limb rising from the downed tree and uses it to steady himself. He twists left and right, attempting to loosen the hitch in his back. While he’s turned, a movement to the north catches his eye. He spins around, facing the direction from which he’d come. There’s more movement between the trees to the right, and still more to the left—the dead. He can hear their low groans now.
Austin spins around, sensing movement much, much closer—one of the dead is there, approaching from the other side of the fallen tree, its arms stretched toward him, gray-skinned fingers snapping closed on air.
As Austin ducks away, he snaps the limb off the tree and swings the thick, six-foot branch like a bat. It strikes the walking corpse just below the ear. The side of its head collapses inward, buckling around the stronger wood as the brittle, rotting skin and spongy bone splits along the top of the skull—black brains geyser into the air and shower to the ground in thick clumps.
Holding on to the blunt weapon, Austin turns and runs toward the trail. Behind him, the dead still follow.
* * *
As soon as Chris spins around, he leaps to his left, away from the hut. At the same time, Remy appears around the corner, knife already poised to throw—which she does as soon as she sees him. The knife spins toward him, flipping through the air and reflecting the orange light of the setting sun with each revolution. The blade slices through his shirt and falls away, harmless.
In Chris’s hand, a rusted round disk with twenty or thirty angled teeth—one of the many items his father collected over the years, never knowing if they would ever come into use. When Chris asked him about the six-inch disk, his dad explained that they were used to cut wood—that there were machines that the disk would attach to and would turn the blade faster than the eye could see. As he throws it at Remy, he tries to remember what his dad called it, but the name escapes him. There’s no time to think about that now anyway.
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