by D. J. Molles
Kyle stumbled backward, then fell to his knees. Then he scrambled for the side of the road—heading for the woods, Lee thought, but he didn’t make it very far. Just barely made it to the overgrown shoulder, in fact, and then he seemed to go limp. Not dead yet, though. Lee could still see his chest rising and falling in great, big, panicked gasps. He could even hear him from across the distance. The feathery sound of someone trying to speak but unable to.
Lee wondered if Kyle knew why this was happening to him.
He stepped out from underneath the old elm tree, and he stood there in the tall grasses and weeds that lined the shoulder of the road. He could see clear across them to Kyle, and he wondered what he should be feeling in that moment. He thought that there were probably hunters that had shot animals and experienced more emotion.
I’ve got no soul anymore, some part of Lee welled up.
But Lee just shook his head. Stuffed it down. I’m just tired. Just very tired, is all. It’s hard to feel when you’re tired.
He got up and made his way out from under the elm tree. Even in the cold, dense air, he thought he could still smell the others—that tinge of corruption just barely tainting the air. The smell of rot. Various stages of decomposition. None more than a few days old.
He stood there at the edge of the road for a moment, looking around and checking to see that nothing else was watching him, nothing had yet been attracted by the sound of the single gunshot. Still, Deuce seemed a little extra cautious, and hesitated a few steps behind Lee, his tail hanging a little lower than usual.
The dog stared at Kyle’s form, still moving, but faintly now.
Lee considered the dog’s reaction for a moment. Clicked his tongue. “C’mon.”
Deuce followed, reluctantly.
By the time they reached Kyle, he had stopped moving. Lee stood over the man, looking down at him. Kyle had died on his back, face up to the sky, mouth open and teeth red, hand over the hole in his chest. For the briefest of moments, as Lee stood there, he thought that Kyle was looking at him, recognizing him, and knowing why Lee had done what he did.
“Because loose ends always come back to bite you in the ass,” Lee mumbled to the emptiness around him. “Just like Shumate.”
Deuce growled.
Lee stiffened at the sound of it, instinctively shouldering his rifle. He looked first to Deuce, his gaze ricocheting off the dog and then following the canine’s intense focus, up the road and into the woods. Lee stooped. Moved his head around and tried to see through the trees and into the woods.
No movement. Yet.
With more urgency now, Lee slung the rifle onto his back and bent down with a gripe and a groan to hook his fingers underneath Kyle’s armpits. The underside of the man’s body was wet with blood—still warm to the touch. Lee’s nose curled, distastefully, and he lifted the dead weight, the stiches in his side suddenly afire.
“Come on, you heavy bastard,” Lee strained under his breath, despite the fact that Kyle was the lightest of the four men he had killed like this. The only four men that had taken up arms against Lee during the assault on Camp Ryder, and lived to be captured, tried by committee, and exiled.
“Had to do it,” Lee continued as he worked his way backward, dragging the body off the road to where it would be hidden in the tall grasses and weeds to the side. The same place as the others. The others that he could smell even stronger, now that he was so close to them. “Had to do it this way, Kyle. I know you weren’t a bad guy, but you weren’t innocent, either. I don’t like it, but it’s just the way things are now. You know?”
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Talking to dead men.
Lee stopped, a little out of breath. He noticed that Deuce refused to step off the road and was prancing and whining now. On the verge of barking. His attention was still affixed down the road. More intent now. Like he was seeing something Lee was not.
Lee looked down the road.
Froze.
Still standing there with his back and hamstrings aching, his finger hooked under dead-Kyle’s warm, bloody back. Breath caught in his chest.
Straight down from him, less than thirty yards away, another man stood, staring right back at him. Except it wasn’t a man. Not really. Not in any way that counted anymore. It stood on two feet, but the way its shoulders were hunched, its head low and feral, naked as a primitive man—Lee knew what it was.
Lee’s first instinct was to break for his rifle, still strapped to his back. But something about the stillness of the moment caught him off guard, made him pause, even as his mind scrambled, Are there more? There’s always more. They’re flanking me. Cutting me off. This is a hunt. Right now, I am their prey.
Deuce was barking.
The thing across the way seemed equally transfixed by Lee. Like the two were in a duel, each waiting for the other to make a move. It looked like it was holding on to something, but over the tall grasses, Lee could not tell what it was.
Lee let Kyle’s body slump out of his grasp, trying to free his hands to get to his rifle, but Kyle’s body fell forward, and the movement could not be hidden. The thing across from him twitched when it saw the movement, and it snarled loudly, but did not make a move toward Lee. Rather, it took a step back. Still clutching whatever it had in its hands.
I know what it has, Lee thought, stomach turning.
The thing hunched low, snatched down to get a better grip on something, its head dipping out of sight. When it came back up, a half second later, it held what was left of a man. A man that had once been fat, but then lost all of that fat from starvation, leaving only a thick flap of loose skin around his belly, which had been opened up and emptied out, like a voluminous leather bag robbed of its contents. The creature had its jaws clamped around the corpse’s neck, and it began tugging backward, eyes still focused on Lee as it did so.
It reminded Lee of a leopard, dragging an antelope into a tree.
Somehow his rifle had gotten off his back and into his hands. Like it wanted to be shot. Like it wanted Lee to take this thing down. This terrifying and repulsive thing. But by the time Lee broke eye contact with it and raised his rifle to sight through the irons, all he could see was the bottom half of the corpse—pale gray legs with old boots and tatters of pants still clinging to them—and it slipped into the trees with a muted rustle.
Maybe that was why the hunters hadn’t bothered to attack Camp Ryder for the last few days.
They’d been dining on the bodies that Lee left behind.
Following him like seagulls follow a fishing trawler.
Waiting to feast on the aftermath of whatever he left behind.
Lee realized he was shaking badly. Deuce was still on the road, whining and growling and moving around in tight, tense little circles. Lee looked down and saw that Kyle was far enough off the road that he would not be seen by passersby. He would not be seen by anyone from the Camp Ryder Hub. At least not for a while. And probably not before the hunters came and harvested him up.
But there’s no more after that, Lee thought. No more free meals.
And then where will you go?
He stumbled, pulling his feet out from under Kyle’s body. Then he crossed the road at a painful but deliberate jog, looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
TWO
KILLER
HE SAT IN A CAGE. Some sort of wooden box, constructed mostly of plywood and two-by-fours and built directly onto the back of a flatbed truck. A sort of mobile holding cell. His hands were still bound, though they had been loosened to allow some circulation, and they had been placed in the front. He could feel his face. The rough-hewn features grown even more haggard and severe. The beard growing and itching. The hair wild and unkempt. The features of a wild man.
Sometimes he would shift where he sat. Other times he would notice that he was incredibly hungry. The bullet wound in his arm ached fiercely. He kept smelling it to see if it was becoming infected. He didn’t think that it
was.
But the physical discomfort did not bother him much. As he sat there in the dark, surrounded by the muted noises of the camp huddled just outside his holding cell, he would occasionally feel a rising sickness in his gut, and panic would follow. It would attack him in a sudden onrush, making his whole body twitch and his heart begin to pound, his breathing becoming ragged and heavy.
Then when the panic subsided, when the feelings of sickness were gone and his stomach no longer threatened to void what little it contained, he would roll over onto his side, facing the wall of the holding cell, cheek pressed to the wooden floor, right at the joint where the shoddy build had left about an inch of space between the wall and the floor—just right there in the corner.
He could press his face down into that corner and he could suck in the cold, unbreathed November air that chilled its way through the crack and crystallized his muddled mind. And when he held his face down as close as it would go, he could see out of the crack with his left eye. He could see the other cages across from him, the ones with the wooden bars so that he could see inside.
He could see their faces.
He bent down there now, first with his eyes closed, just breathing the air, settling himself. It smelled of the plywood and boards that his cage was constructed of—the piney, raw smell of them, but also the tangy odor of the pressure treatments. But once your nose became accustomed to that, you could smell beyond it. You could smell the air outside.
It smelled like autumn. Oaky, with a hint of campfire smoke. Vehicle exhaust. The distinct rank of many, many people living in one place. Better than the overpowering scent of himself and his pinewood box, though.
He opened his eyes.
Gray light, turning yellow.
It was early morning.
The fifth morning, possibly? Maybe just the fourth.
His stomach clenched, aching in the background of his mind, wanting food. He had not eaten since he’d arrived here. Since he’d spoken to the man named Deacon Chalmers. They gave him water on occasion, but not food. They told him that he needed to purify himself. They told him he had to fast for five days. That it would clear his mind and cement his decisions.
Then he would be required to “prove” himself.
He knew what the proof was.
Sometimes he dreaded it. At other times, he had no strong feelings about it. He’d done worse things, hadn’t he? Maybe. He wasn’t quite sure, and things weren’t coming in clear right now. Sometimes the “proof” felt like it would be easy to accomplish. After all, it would be a stranger, wouldn’t? He could kill a stranger. He’d already killed a friend.
Across from him, the shapes that occupied the neighboring cage were huddled under blankets, watching the men that passed by, their eyes wary and uncertain. The eyes of the abused—always waiting for the unknown moment when they would be called upon again to experience pain.
LaRouche watched them, intensely, breathlessly. He searched their faces. There was one in particular that he was looking for. The one with the green eyes—he didn’t know her name. She was a small thing, and he didn’t think she was much more than sixteen or seventeen years old. She was not particularly pretty, but her eyes were sharp. Clear. They reminded LaRouche of who he was. They kept awake some small part of him that was trying to curl up and die.
For some reason that he could not explain, that girl gave him something while he sat in his little cage, starving and thinking and alternately tormenting himself into a panic and soothing himself into a lull. He sought her out when he bent down to this little crack in his cage. Sought out her sanity.
But now he couldn’t find her.
He feared perhaps she’d been taken away the previous night, and not yet returned. That was what they did. They took the girls away for the night and returned them in the morning. Sometimes just late at night, though most of the men preferred the female company. Preferred a warm body next to them. Maybe it helped them sleep. Maybe it reminded them of the wives they had lost.
But they were all lost, weren’t they?
Every fucking one of them.
LaRouche included.
He searched the faces again, the concern for the girl supplanting his other worries for a brief moment, and the absence of them was almost a relief, even if they were only replaced by another bad thing. Then he began to wonder why he should care about the girl at all.
You’ve got your own problems, he thought. Though, when he tried to picture them, all he could think of was a man on a cross. A man with his guts ripped open and spilled out on the ground. The proof of his loyalty.
The proof is in the pudding, he thought to himself nonsensically, staring up at the dark ceiling. What am I doing here? Am I accomplishing anything? Or am I just… floating along?
The panic began to rise in his chest again.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
A rattle came from the door of his cage, and by the time he had managed to sit up, swallowing hard against a little flame that licked up from his stomach and into his throat, the door was open and morning light blinded him along with a rush of cold air and smells that had before been muted, but now assaulted him straight on. And with them came the fresh recognition of his own stench—body odor and stale urine.
A man stood in the light. It was barely an hour past dawn and the sun had yet to even fully rise above the trees, but still he found himself squinting and holding up his hands as though to shade his eyes. For a brief moment, he saw himself as the man must have seen him. Pathetic.
The man named Clyde set down a bottle of water. The label was worn away so that only the little patches of white paper still clung to ancient glue. The bottle was scratched and scarred and tinted with dirt, though the water inside looked clean enough.
LaRouche reached for it eagerly. Almost aggressively. As though Clyde might have snatched the bottle away if LaRouche was not quick enough. He guzzled the water, not realizing how dry his lips were until he tried to part them to take the drink. The water was ice cold and it extinguished the flame in his belly, at least for now.
It also awakened his stomach and the hunger hit him like a cramp.
LaRouche lowered the bottle, gasping for air. When he’d taken a few breaths, his voice came out and it sounded like a reasonable facsimile of the voice that he remembered as his own. “How long are they keeping me in here?”
Clyde had his oily hair pulled back into a short ponytail this time. He pushed his large-frame glasses up his nose with a knuckle and eyed LaRouche. His expression was aloof. Enigmatic. LaRouche had a hard time reading the man. From the few interactions they’d had, LaRouche had found Clyde to be… reserved?
No. Something worse than that.
Clyde had done things. Just like LaRouche. And LaRouche knew that his own lack of emotion and words were not from being reserved, but rather from a quiet sort of misery. The kind that you could not escape.
Clyde’s breath fogged in the air as he spoke. “You need to come with me.” He stepped to the side of the doorway and stood, expectantly.
LaRouche regarded the other man for another moment, and his stomach flipping two ways. First, elated, glad for the chance to be out of the cage. Then apprehensive. Wondering what was about to happen. Wondering if this was some other test he had to endure. Another test of his loyalty to the Followers. Of his belief in their mission.
LaRouche slid forward until his feet hung off the edge of the flatbed truck. After sitting and lying down for so long, the feeling of gravity pulling blood into his feet was almost painful. Like if he set his weight on them, they would burst. So he did it slowly, like someone with bare feet might test out ice-cold floors.
When he supported his own weight, his feet stung and his knees creaked. His back ached from being upright for the first time in days. Clyde watched him, taking visual stock of LaRouche for the first time since he’d been captured in the woods along the river, broken and empty.
Like a cracked bucket.
A cracked pot.
Wasn’t that another phrase for crazy? Cracked pot?
That was a good description for LaRouche. Crazy and empty.
Clyde gestured to LaRouche’s arm, where the bandaging looked alternately brown and yellow. “How’s that?”
LaRouche followed Clyde’s pointing finger to the wound on his left arm. “Could use a fresh bandage.”
Clyde nodded, and that was the extent of the conversation about LaRouche’s wounds. Now the man that seemed strangely educated and out of place in this world nodded his head in the direction of a cluster of large, canvas tents. “Go to the one on the right.”
LaRouche began walking. All around them was the sprawl of the Followers camp—one of many, LaRouche had gathered. This one had taken up residency on a small farm. The original constructions stood out like monuments to a forgotten world. The farmhouse. The carport. The barn. The woodshed. A few moldering one-ton rolls of hay backed into a lean-to that might have once been used for livestock sheltering.
But amid all of this old-world stuff was the evidence of what the world had become. Cars and trucks and campers and tents were crammed in, almost touching each other, filling up the space between the farmhouse and the barn, and between the barn and the woodshed. They bustled and buzzed like a hive. Men with rifles moved about their morning business, all wearing white armbands that bore the black circle and cross of the Followers of the Apocalypse. The only empty space seemed to be the spaces left for the campfires. Some of the fires burned in pits lined with stone or cinder block or brick, and others had been lit in fifty-five-gallon drums.
LaRouche looked over his shoulder again. Looking for the girl with the green eyes.
Clyde followed his gaze. “What are you looking at?”
LaRouche shook his head, then addressed himself to the tent as he approached it. “Nothing. Just looking.”
Clyde walked abreast of him, rather than behind. He had a rifle, but he didn’t point it at LaRouche. It remained slung on his back. When he spoke, his voice took a quiet, musing quality. “You’re not a prisoner, you know.”
