The Weight of the Dead

by Brian Hodge

  “If you knew enough to ask the question,” the woman said, “didn’t you really know the answer, too, already?”

  It cut the tongue right out of her, as Melody sat up and scooted back to lean against the stump. Trying to make sense of everything that couldn’t be, but was. You hoped. You hoped for things, and pretended they might be within reach, and when they didn’t answer you could console yourself that, well, you’d tried.

  But if they did, when they did …

  This Tara, she was neither young nor old. She was just right. Like she’d grown into what was, for her, perfection, then decided to stay there. Her hair was red, the color of rhubarb, and nearly to her waist, thick as summer wheat. Her eyes, green. Clover would want to be that shade of green, if it only knew.

  Men would love her, of course, and she would be the ruin of them.

  That much, at least, was a comforting thought. As long as it was the right men.

  “If it’s never ‘just like that,’ then what is it like?” Melody asked.

  Tara said nothing at first, just let the question toss and dance on the winds, but then she got down to it and told her what was what, how these things really worked, and never once had Melody considered that everything she’d brought to sacrifice, and the blood that followed, was only the first step, just a way of getting their attention.

  Melody thinking, No, come on, please, anything but that.

  * * *

  It was late when she got back to the village, but since it was October, late wasn’t what it used to be, and when the guards at the gate chastised her for it, she glared at them with all the spite she could muster until they backed down like whipped dogs. Some guards.

  There was no hiding the state of her arms, and her grandmother made a fuss when she saw them. Without even having to think about it, Melody spun a lie of gravity and thorns. Grandmothers were always ready to believe the worst about clumsy girls. Jeremy, though, knew better. He might still believe the part about the thorns, but he looked at her as if he knew, absolutely knew, that something of huge importance had happened, and that he wanted her back the way she used to be.

  “Did you see Dad?” he asked.

  “Sure. He’s built himself a nice shelter.” Then she hugged him and held tight and kissed him on top of the head. “He said to give you that.”

  When Jeremy tried to squirm away, like he always did at the four-second mark, she refused to let him go, because while he may have been a pest sometimes, he was her pest, and her responsibility too, and she’d almost been tempted out there in the woods, deeper than deep, to say, Yes, okay, if that’s what it takes, I’ll bring him to you, until she remembered everything about that bond their father had always made sure she would never forget.

  She was the only big sister Jeremy would ever have. That counted for something.

  And should have been enough to ride this dilemma through, until their father’s life or death was decided and there was no more need for her to choose. Would have been enough, if only she could have stayed inside.

  Inside, where she wouldn’t have to notice the eyes that followed her, Hunsicker and his kind, the rough men who liked small things in their beds.

  Inside, where she wouldn’t have to contend with the sight of Jenna Harkin, and how there seemed so much less of her now. So much less life, less hope, so much less left to look forward to in each and every tomorrow. So much less love between them. Fact was, she’d have to say Jenna probably hated her now, for her father’s crime, or would have hated her if she’d had that much fight left. Her eyes were downcast and resigned, staring at the ground as if she spent too many hours thinking of the day she’d be under it. Jenna was going dead a little at a time, whittled down to hips that moved on command and a mouth that told whatever lies it had to, when it wasn’t otherwise occupied, and the rest of her just not there anymore.

  Wherever Melody had to go, she tried to walk lightly, with no shows of pride or promise. She walked as if there was even less to her than there was to begin with. She walked as if she had no breasts, small as they were. Walked as if she had no hips. She walked pretending that she didn’t reflect the light of the sun at all, invisible, just a dark, sexless smudge drifting across the ground.

  It made no difference. Their hungry eyes found her anyway, and their blackened hearts filled in the rest.

  “How’s he getting along out there by his lonesome?” Hunsicker asked her one afternoon, ten paces from the chicken coops, and she’d never seen him coming. He sounded like the happiest man on earth.

  She stood her ground, though. He’d enjoy it all the more if he could get her backing away, just so he could keep dogging her. “He’s getting by, and he says anything you’ve got to say to me, you can run it past him first.”

  When Hunsicker smiled, his tiny eyes twinkled. He’d not shaved in days, and the brown stubble looked coarse enough to grate nutmeg. If she’d let herself, she would’ve shuddered at the thought of the feel of it.

  “Then maybe we’ll have us a parley, him and me. While there’s still time.” He looked her top to bottom, seeing everything, everything. “How much do you weigh, little sister?”

  What kind of question was that? She had no idea how to answer, even if she’d known what the scales would tell.

  “Because you don’t look like you’d weigh much more than a full feed bag. Such a bitty thing, someone could hang you up here off his shoulders and hardly know you were there at all.” He peered down his nose and gave two sharp sniffs. “Except for the smell.”

  Then he laughed and went on his way.

  She couldn’t live like this, and wouldn’t, not for long, and if everyone else in the village expected her to, then it would end the same as with her father, and she’d be the next one driven into the woods, dragging along a two-hundred-pound corpse chained to her back, Hunsicker’s or somebody else’s.

  Whatever they were out there, awakening beyond the wild, they who could hear a girl’s tears and smell her blood and who demanded little boys, maybe they were kind, in their way.

  Maybe they would be nice to him.

  * * *

  She wasn’t sure when they crossed it, but knew that at some point they’d taken a step that marked the farthest away from home Jeremy had ever strayed. He’d never been a-scavenging, only looked impatiently forward to the day when he would. He was on the adventure of his life now, and she couldn’t even tell him.

  She led him by the hand the whole time, and he consented to it without a single complaint, not like him at all. But she knew why. It was a big world getting bigger all the time. There’d been a lot of walking since they’d heard the last faint sounds of the village behind them. To his eyes, she was sure, the trees looked taller, and the sky-eating clouds looked angrier, and the streams looked swifter, and the leaves underfoot crunched louder, with menace, calling out for bears and packs of feral dogs.

  “Why would Dad be out this far?” he asked. “It’s too far. Nobody’d want to take him his food.”

  “Because we’re not just visiting him, silly. We’re going away with him. He’s cut Tom Harkin off himself, so now we’re going to make a new home, just the three of us.”

  Jeremy peered up at her, clomping along at her side and doing the calculations for all the massive change this would entail. “You mean we’re never going back?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” he bawled. “I would’ve brought some shirts. And I’m not even wearing my favorite pants. Or my digger! I’ll need my digger!”

  “Now think,” she told him. “If anyone had seen you dragging that much stuff along, they would’ve known something was going on.” He balked, unable to walk and fret at the same time, so she yanked to keep him moving. “Dad’ll make you a new digger. And you can get pants anywhere.”

  He would hate her forever, she feared. For everything, but most of all for the lies. Every last thing he was hearing from her, just one lie after another.

  But
then, she needed the practice. She still had no idea what to tell her father when he came back to the village, healthy and spared, the ordeal of the Rot behind him, crying and hugging her with relief, then looking for his son so he could hug him too.

  When she found the stump again, it seemed like so much longer ago than yesterday that she’d been here last. She had him sit facing ahead, while she sat facing the direction they’d come from, the two of them back to back.

  “You watch for him that way,” she told him, “and I’ll watch this way.”

  He complained that he wanted them to face the same direction, complained because complaining was his job, it seemed, so she told him that this way they got to see twice as much. Nobody could sneak up on them, and they had each other’s backs. All lies, even the twice-as-much part, because it was all she could do to slump there and stare at the forest floor. She couldn’t even keep her head up, fighting against the weight of her decision.

  How would they know, she wondered. How would they even know to come and collect their due? Did they have eyes everywhere, among the birds and snakes and fast-footed hares? Or were they listeners, instead, zeroing in on Jeremy as he chattered about what their new home might be like or the unrelieved pounding of her heart?

  Or maybe they felt things in the wind that she herself would have no idea how to begin seeking, and could follow them to their source, the way a book she’d borrowed from Miles McGee told of fish called sharks, and how they could follow blood through leagues of ocean to the open wound that shed it.

  “Are you cold?” Jeremy asked. “I can feel your back shaking.”

  “No,” she said, so he wouldn’t turn around. It was an easy word to say, no matter how much your throat was clenching. Then, when she could, “Maybe a little.”

  He scoffed. “It’s not that cold out.”

  And he would hate her forever. Dad too, if he knew.

  But they would be nice to him. Of course they would. There was a reason for this, the way there was a reason for everything. Tara, she was still fine, whatever she was now … and that was it, maybe. She’d never had a son of her own, and now she wanted one, although not just any boy would do. She could only be happy with a boy descended from the only mortal man she’d ever loved.

  They’ll be good to him …

  “Hey,” he said. She felt him straighten against her back. “I see someone moving. It’s got to be him, right? Got to be Dad.”

  “Probably.” She clenched her teeth to make the rest of her mouth work. “But he’s been sick, remember. He may not look himself.”

  … and one day he’ll be glad …

  “No … no, I don’t think it’s him.”

  “He’s got some new friends now, it might be one of them he sent to find us.”

  “There’s more than one. They don’t look like anybody I’ve ever seen.” Jeremy made a sound he’d never made before and began to squirm. His bony little shoulder dug into her back as he twisted around. “You’re not even looking!”

  “Just turn and face the way I told you to, Jeremy,” she snapped. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

  She could hear him breathing, faster and heavier now, and when he made a whining noise, he sounded just like Patches did whenever he knew something was wrong but couldn’t grasp what.

  “Why would Dad have friends like this?” Jeremy whispered. “There’s something wrong with these people…”

  He began to say her name, over and over, “Melody Melody Melody,” sometimes a question and sometimes a plea. She heard the heels of his shoes drumming back against the stump, and gradually something else began to fade in beneath that, a sound like walking, almost, as if things that no longer made a noise were trying to remember how to do it, so they would seem normal.

  They’ll be nice to him, and someday he’ll be glad.

  “These aren’t really people, are they?” His voice had gone higher and tighter. “People don’t move like that.”

  Okay, so they could still make some noise after all. They could still grunt.

  “You’re not looking, you’re not looking!” he cried, all accusations now, and he whirled on the stump, practically on top of her back, throwing both arms around her shoulders and burying his face against her neck, his breath scorching.

  “You’ve got to go with them. You just do.” Her voice was barely there. “They’ll take you to where Dad is, and I have to stay here.”

  But he knew, knew something was wrong but couldn’t understand what. Or why. At least Patches never wondered why, and this made it ten times worse. She kept her head down so she wouldn’t see any of it happen, then squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see the shadows. But she felt them, whatever they were, a presence, a pressure like waves of heat and hunger, as they gathered on either side of the stump, and while her brother squealed, they gently, very gently, peeled his arms free of her and lifted him away, and he was gone, the weight of him, the wet of him, just gone.

  She wasn’t going to move, not as long as Jeremy was crying, not even to cover her ears, and he cried for a long time. The sound receded behind her as slow as ice melted, faint fainter faintest, his each and every wail yanking at her heart, ever more violently the farther away it got, until even the echo of him was gone, fading like a last wisp of smoke that dissipated among the trees. But at least it never cut off abruptly, and she supposed that this, too, was a good sign.

  * * *

  He died anyway.

  Her father. Dead.

  There was no body to find, but what other conclusion was she supposed to draw? She could take a hint. She was a woman now, and women knew things. She could feel it as surely as the coming winter: that hole in the world, in the shape of her father, turned permanent. He was never coming back to refill it.

  And, within the village walls, the wolves circled and eyed her whenever she passed.

  The tally of loss was getting worse all the time: down one dog, one father, one little brother, and one big bag of stupid gadgets that she’d never have gotten to work again anyway. Women knew things, all right. Everything except how to realize they were being lied to when it mattered most.

  She tried to locate her father anyway and roved among his campsites. She found his blanket covered with fallen leaves, wrinkled her nose at the rotting residue of Tom Harkin scraped onto trees and logs. Found the last two platefuls of food, eaten, but so messily she couldn’t imagine they’d been eaten by anything human. Found, finally, the thing that convinced her he must be dead, because he would never have left it behind: a square of paper folded and unfolded ten thousand times before being nailed to one of the trees with a thorn. A pencil drawing of her and Jeremy, just their faces, younger by two or three summers, his beneath hers and her hair sweeping down around him like protective arms. She’d forgotten her father had drawn it. Forgotten he even could.

  She kept it. But knew it would be years years years before she could unfold it to look at again.

  She felt worst of all for her grandfather. He never wanted to leave his post on the wall at all now. Little runaway boys had to come home sometime.

  As, within the village, the wolves gathered, biding their time for attack.

  She watched them from the windows and locked doors of the trailer where she no longer lived, where nobody lived anymore, a home that had fed its people one by one to the ground and the woods until she was the last one left, and if the men had their way, she probably wouldn’t be long in following. One way or another. She watched them go about their days, rough and unshaven, their hands like tree bark and cruelty in their laughter. They breathed with the arrogance of men who knew exactly how much they could get away with. They celebrated it in every step.

  Even the tiniest victory over them had to be better than nothing.

  She found Miles McGee before any of the rest of them had a chance to split her apart from the herd. Miles was still a year older than she was, and still most of his life the closest thing she had to a big brother, and still starting to l
ook at her differently. Which she was now glad of, finally liking it more than not, because what choice did she have? Nothing was more futile than wanting things to stay the same when you knew nothing ever did.

  “There’s something I’ve got that I can only give away once,” she told him, standing on tiptoe, leaning into this tall boy who looked like pole beans should be growing on him; who had brought her books from faraway places. “And if I do, that means nobody else gets to take it.”

  It was a minute before he understood what she meant.

  Apparently they started going dumb pretty early.

  * * *

  Unlike Miles, she didn’t sleep that night afterward, or if she did it was the kind of sleep where all you did was dream you were wide-awake, so they cancelled each other out. Both states felt the same, lying there a little sore, sort of throbbing, kind of warm, a lot scared.

  Tara wouldn’t be scared, she thought. Tara would move right along and go back to tampering with the balance of nature.

  Melody knew she had to have slept some, though, sliding awake a little at a time. How else could she explain only gradually becoming aware there was screaming going on outside, and that it must’ve been going on for a while, because her dreams had been making it their own.

  Her eyes popped open in what passed for dark on a night with this much moon showing. She listened to the echoing sound of a shriek that built and built and seemed to whiz from one side of the village to the center, a man’s but faster than a man could run, ending with a guttural crescendo, as if the last scream exploded out of him with terrible violence, then abrupt stillness.

  Fully awake now, she listened for more, like listening for a crack of thunder from a passing storm, and for a moment doubted she’d really heard anything at all.

  At her side, Miles turtled his head from beneath the covers and propped himself back on his elbows and peered around in the gloom. “Were you having a bad dream? Was that you mak—”

  “Shush yourself.” She popped a fingertip to his lips like she’d been doing it all her life, as she heard the hubbub of the village coming awake around them, jumpy and panicked and full of fraying nerves. “You think we should…?”