The blade flies toward Remy, and unlike Chris and her throwing knives, she doesn’t realize that he’s armed—she doesn’t see the deadly, spinning disk until it’s too late. Chris knows the blade won’t outright kill her, but it will definitely slow her down and give him enough time to make it back to his machete and bow.
The blade catches Remy an inch above her hipbone and shreds through her dress. It’s not a glancing blow, but catches her side with all the force Chris put behind it. The teeth sink into her skin and the blade buries itself at least a third of the way into her soft tissue. She falls against the hut’s wall, her hands going to the disk as a look of terror and confusion envelopes her face. She holds onto the blade and Chris can tell she’s trying to decide whether it would be best to leave it in, or pull it out.
He straightens, covers the short distance, and stands over her. She peers upward, tears in her eyes.
Chris says, “Hurts, doesn’t it?” His voice is low, menacing, and her head jerks to the side as if his words have taken physical form and slapped her. He can’t help but feel exhilarated by his sudden power over her.
She grimaces and her hand inadvertently grabs the blade. The movement makes her cry out in pain.
He says, “You do realize what this means, don’t you?”
She looks up at him questioningly.
He points at the blade and the blood seeping from her side. “Even if you survive, you might as well be dead.”
Her brows knit together. She still doesn’t understand.
“Oh, that’s right,” he says. “This is something you never learned… oh, excuse me… something I never taught you.” He takes a step away. “You never understood what it takes to survive out here. You see, the first thing my dad taught me wasn’t how to hunt or build a fire… it was how to take care of myself. Out here, you can die from a splinter. The Tainted aren’t the biggest danger…” he shakes his head. “At least with them you’re dead within a few minutes. No, that!” He points to the blade again. “That might take weeks to kill you.”
Her lips move, mouthing a word but it’s too quiet to hear.
He cups a hand to his ear, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear you.”
She meets his eyes, rage burning through the pain. “You bastard.”
All he can do is smile. She’s still here, still alive, but he knows her days are numbered—and he’s never been happier.
* * *
He leaves her on the ground, leaned up against the side of the hut, while he goes inside, grabs a tattered backpack from a hook attached to the ceiling, then begins packing it with items he thinks he might need for an extended stay beyond Homestead. He wished he still had a tent, but the one he and his father used to have has long since outlived its usefulness. He’ll just have to find another one. If the stories Remy told him were true, and there is a large store in Carson’s Crossing, maybe there will be supplies he can use—that is, if the mob of Tainted are gone. Otherwise, he’ll have to keep moving.
Chris grabs hanging baskets from the ceiling, dumping the contents onto the ground. He packs lengths of nylon rope, a box of matches (even though only one in ten have ever been of any use), more arrows for the bow, and anything else he thinks might help him out on the road. He also packs all the food.
If Remy can survive, then she can catch or trap her own. However, he doubts she’ll survive.
He slides his arm through the straps and turns to examine the hut. Years of stuff, collected by his father, most of it worthless, will eventually succumb to the river. There’s so much water slicing through the tunnel under the Picket Fence that Chris believes it’ll be sooner rather than later.
It’s time to go. His eyes linger briefly on the plastic red box and he ponders on the pictures inside—and what they mean.
Family. His family. To this day, they’d been protecting him. He hates to think how—or why—his father could bring himself to do such a thing to them, to impale them for years on that fence.
He leaves the pictures behind. There’s no use remembering them, especially when the only memory he does have is of their lifeless, limbless, rotting torsos. Maybe one day the memory of them will fade. He can’t leave them as they are now either. That, he would never let himself live down.
He steps outside and glances around the corner. Remy is right where he left her. He wants to say something clever—something to instill dread within her. Just to get the last and final word. Instead, Chris opts to walk away from her. He has two more things to do before he leaves and he’s wasted enough time with Remy as it is.
* * *
The machete and the bow still lay where he left them on the ground. He leaves the bow but retrieves the blade. He starts with the remaining male Guardians on the north end of the fence. With one sweeping swipe, he slices through each skull with ease. Like a thrown switch, the hissing and grunting stops almost immediately.
Now he stands facing the older female Guardian. She looks nothing like the woman from the photograph—yet he knows this is his mother. He feels it deep within himself, some sort of internal confirmation verified by a mother-son connection. Watching her cloudy eyes, he can’t help but wonder if somewhere deep within her rotting brain, she recognizes him. Her mouth opens and snaps on air. Her purplish-black tongue lolls around in her mouth, as if trying to form words that won’t quite transfer from her mind to her mouth.
Chris swings the blade again, silencing his mother forever.
He turns to the last—his sister.
There’s no mistaking who she is—even without the locket to identify her as the young woman in the family portrait, there’s still enough there that Chris recognizes her: the high cheekbones, the yellow-gold hair (although most of it has fallen out and is stained with grime), and the deep-socketed eyes. For a brief moment, a shiver of pity brings water to his eyes.
The machete blurs through the air and the thing that was once his sister is no more. Before he turns away, he steps forward, unclasps the chain from the corpse’s neck, and slides the locket into his pocket. He may have left the photographs, but he doesn’t want to leave this. He feels strongly that he needs to keep this one token with him.
Suddenly, the earth shakes beneath him and the overwhelming sound of roaring of water fills the air. The vibrations in the ground along the Picket Fence increases ten-fold and Chris realizes that the roof of the tunnel has just collapsed. He has no idea how thick the remaining bridge of land is between this side of the fence and the other, but it’s not going to hold long. What he thought might happen in hours or days is proving to be completely wrong. Chris only had minutes. If he had tarried in the hut any longer, or continued to play cat and mouse with Remy—if he had paused to say those last words to her instead of turning and walking away, he might have been stuck on the other side, trapped by the river.
He starts to take a tentative step backward, but a voice stops him.
“Don’t move.”
Chris’s head jerks upward toward the sound. Remy is standing on the other side of the fence, pointing his bow at him. She has removed the blade from her side and blood continues to seep through the fabric of her dress. She has the bowstring pulled only about halfway. Her hands shake as her weakened condition attempts to counter the tension on the bow. Even if she shoots the arrow, she’ll probably miss him—but as close as she’s standing to him, he doesn’t want to take that chance.
He gets a sudden idea and places his hand on one of the horizontal pikes that make up the fence. The slightest pressure from his hand causes it to move. “Okay, okay,” he says, trying to stall for just a couple more seconds.
His fist tightens around the pole and he slowly begins to lift it out of the ground. The saturated earth sucks against the wood, but with a little more effort, the four-foot picket comes free.
“I said don’t move.”
“You need to see this, Remy.”
She steps forward, the arrow’s point less than a foot away now. “I said stop.”
&
nbsp; “Remy…” Chris flicks his right wrist backward and the machete flies away. “… I’m unarmed.” His left hand remains on the picket, however, continuing to pull it from the ground.
When it comes free, he forces himself to look away from her, and down at the hole. Within seconds, it fills with water.
He turns his eyes back to Remy. She’s hurting, he can see it in the creases in her face. He’s amazed she’s still standing, much less continuing to hold tension on the bowstring.
“Look, Remy,” he says, nodding to the ground.
She shakes her head.
“I’m not trying to trick you, Remy. I’m leaving and I’m trying to show you why I’m leaving.”
Again, she senses a trick and refuses to take her eyes off him.
The roar of water below their feet increases, making it hard to hear. She seems to take notice of it for the first time. Her head cocks to one side as she listens. “What is that?” she asks.
“The river,” Chris answers simply.
Remy’s eyes are drawn away from him, but not to the ground. Something over his left shoulder catches her attention and her eyes grow wide in terror. The bow turns away and her fingers let loose of the string. Chris ducks to the right even though the arrow was nowhere close to striking him. He turns to see what has caught her attention.
Bursting from the trees and underbrush are a dozen or so Tainted—just in front of them is Austin, running in a full-out panic.
* * *
Chris acts quickly. He springs back to his feet, reaches across the fence, grabs the bow, and snatches it from Remy’s grasp. He strikes her with the pole in his left hand, hitting her full force in the chest. He tosses the bow behind him where it falls near the machete.
Gripping the picket from the fence with both hands, he raises the heavy length of wood over his head. Now to complete the second item from his list. While he packed earlier, he kept trying to convince himself that if things didn’t go his way out there beyond Homestead, that he could always come back and see if the river had taken his home yet. However, he can’t risk that. Once he leaves, there must be no reason for him to return.
He suspected the distance between the surface and the roof of the cave was only a few feet. The water filling the hole from the removed picket confirmed this. If he could just create a direct line between the surface and the cave, the water pressure from below will do the rest.
“Help!” shouts Austin from behind.
Before him, Remy lies on her back, one hand clutched at her side—the other at her chest. She stares at Chris with gape-mouthed horror.
Chris brings the length of wood down and strikes the top of another picket, driving it further into the soft ground. Again, he raises the makeshift club and strikes the same picket. It sinks down to knee height before flying back upward as if spring loaded from below. A geyser of water follows the post as it pushes the wood clear.
Chris stumbles away and falls to the ground.
The pressure from the river below widens the hole instantly. More pieces of fence fly upward as a line of water sprays to the sky.
Chris turns away from the fence. “Here,” he shouts at Austin, and tosses the big man the length of wood. Austin slides to a stop and turns to face the oncoming dead. Chris snatches up the machete and charges forward. He doesn’t want to stay too close to the Picket Fence because there’s no telling how wide the channel will be once the river has finished separating Homestead from the forest.
He darts past Austin and goes to work. He spins and hacks with relentless speed. Black gore and rotting body parts separate from their owners and litter the ground with ichor. He risks a glance back and see Austin engaging several Tainted. The heavy length of wood thunks against skull after skull, cratering the soft bone with such force that dark liquid flies from the corpses' mouths, noses, and ears.
Chris dispatches three or four more then turns in a wide circle, searching for another target. His heart hammers in his chest and his lungs breathe in air with short, shallow gasps. His eyes scan the forest floor. At first he thought there were only about a dozen Tainted following Austin. However, based on the quantity of body parts lying around, there have to have been more than twenty.
A sense of relief floods through him. He never faced more than two or three in the past, always choosing flight over fight unless absolutely necessary. Never in his life would he have thought he could dispatch this many.
Chris heads back toward the Picket Fence—or, what used to be the Picket Fence. There’s nothing there now but a wide crack in the ground, separating this side from Homestead. Luckily, he tossed his bow far enough away that it wasn’t swallowed by the river. He picks it up and retrieves a spare arrow from his pack. He nocks the arrow, draws the string to his cheek, and points it at Austin, who is just reappearing in the clearing.
Austin stops dead in his tracks, face frozen in terror and confusion.
Don’t do it, son.
Chris’s head jerks as if slapped. He can’t think of a more inopportune time for his dad’s voice to make an appearance.
Son… look at him.
Chris does. His eyes play over the larger man, taking in the tattered sneakers, the holey jeans, the t-shirt depicting some character in a tight blue suit and cape. Then he sees Austin’s face: the tired, vacant eyes, the quivering lip, and the round, child-like face.
He’s not all there, Chris.
He can see it now. Earlier, when Austin had been so upset with Remy and tried to choke her—it was because she hurt him so terribly that it drove him into a blind rage. It wasn’t a premeditative outburst Chris had witnessed earlier, but a reflex response to emotion. He’s more than sure that everything Austin had done was all a product of Remy’s manipulative personality. She was the brain that controlled the muscle.
“Austin! Help me!”
Chris lowers the bow and turns around. Remy has made it back to her feet. She stands near the gap, which by now is nearly ten or twelve feet across. From the corner of his eye, Chris sees Austin approach Remy from this side.
“Can you jump?” he asks.
Remy shakes her head but says, “I can try.”
Austin takes a few tentative steps forward. “I’ll catch you.”
Remy’s eyes cut to Chris. In her state, he doesn’t think that she can make the jump. He makes a non-committal motion with his hand, slings his bow across his shoulder, and crosses his arms to watch.
She backs away from the gap. “I don’t think I can do it,” she says, voice cracking.
“Try,” Austin says.
She takes another step back, then sets herself to run, leaning forward, grimacing at the pain in her side. Remy runs. She’s nowhere near as fast as she’d been that first day he’d met her in the forest. With each step, Chris believes more and more that she is actually going to make it across the gap.
When she reaches the edge, her feet slip in the mud. She’s still able to leap forward, but there isn’t near enough spring in her legs to launch her all the way across. She lands short, chest thumping against the lip on the other side. She begins to slide backward. Arms scrambling for something to hold on to, she manages to find some thin roots to keep her from falling into the rushing river below.
As she strikes the ground and begins to slide back, Austin falls to his knees and slides forward to the mud with an outstretched hand. Her body weight is too much for the roots and they snap, but before she can fall, Austin grabs her arm. He pulls her forward with near inhuman ease.
Chris is at a loss as to what to do now.
As Austin brings Remy to her feet, he hugs her tightly and she returns it. She tries to shift in his arms, but he continues to hold her. She pats his back. “Austin, let me go.”
He continues to hold her. Austin looks at Chris from over the top of Remy’s head. Tears flood from the big man’s eyes and cut clear channels through the dirt and grim on his skin.
Remy pounds her fist into Austin’s back now. “Austin, let me go! I can�
�t breathe.”
Still, Austin holds fast to her.
The realization of what Austin is about to do strikes Chris like a hammer. He takes a step toward the couple, about to say something to Austin when Austin’s head begins to slowly shake. Chris stops, the unspoken words caught in his throat.
Austin takes a step toward the gap… then another.
Remy is panicking now. The pain in her side is obviously forgotten because she uses both fists to pound against his back.
He takes another step toward the gap.
Like a tree falling to the ground, Austin leans over and lets gravity take him and Remy. Chris rushes to the southern cliff just in time to see the couple shoot out into the main body of the river. Remy still thrashes and beats against Austin, but his grip on her is relentless and unbreaking.
Then come the fish. They swarm on the couple like bees in a hive. Remy’s screams resonate across the water as hundreds of fish peck at her body. Around them, the dirty brown water boils with activity, then begins to darken with a reddish stain. Finally, Remy’s cries are cut off—either in death or by the suffocating water, Chris does not know. What has him more on edge is the fact that, through the whole ordeal, Austin never made a sound.
Chris turns and walks away, heading toward the house where Austin spent the winter. The sun will be down well before he makes it there, but with any luck, the moon might give him enough light to see by—if not, he’ll find a tree to climb up for the night. He thinks he’ll stay there for a few days before moving on to Carson’s Crossing. If nothing else, he can bar the doors closed and maybe, just maybe, have one night of restful sleep—just one night where he doesn’t have to worry about the Tainted falling on him as he sleeps.
Chapter Sixteen
Carson’s Crossing is much like Chris imagined it—a small, sprawling town overgrown with unkempt yards and encroaching brush. Many of the homes lean to one side or another due to the lack of inhabitants to maintain them. If roofs have not caved in, then they are stripped of shingles, more evidence of passing storm damage.
Tainted Page 11
