Offspring

by Jack Ketchum

  Power.

  She wrapped the shirt around it and tied the bottom corners together between its legs, then knotted the arms and slipped them over her head so that the baby hung pressed with its belly to her back behind her shoulders in a makeshift harness, riding high enough so that she could quickly get to the knife. The baby’s tiny fingers flexed against her naked back as though seeking purchase in the Woman’s flesh, opening and closing against her.

  She walked quickly to the back of the cave.

  She felt a chill. The body of the other infant, the one who had brought this upon them, lay leaning against the wall in the white plastic garbage bag to the right of the Cow. She could see the side of his face and one shoulder pressed straining into the bag, as though the infant were trying to break free.

  Its spirit unreleased.

  She had failed in this.

  There was no hope for release now but she could still set its vengeance far away from her at least, she could set it into the drifts and deeps of the sea.

  She picked up the bag, twisted it, and tied it into her belt.

  She reached into the rusted yellow coffee can beside the Cow and found his tethers and his key. She removed the chains and left them dangling. She could find other chains. But the Cow could not be left behind. The Cow was necessary in order to begin again.

  She tied the strong gut lines around his wrists, took the lines in one hand and the ax in the other and walked him to the entrance to the cave. Ordinarily she would have walked him backward—his wrists tied behind his back. The Cow had become very adept at walking backward, and it was amusing to watch him stumble. But the trail was narrow and she had no wish to lose him down the mountain or be delayed by his stumbling.

  Outside the wind shifted and she smelled salt and tide off the sea. She heard voices. Whispers.

  Not yet to the entrance, but close by.

  She jerked at the tethers. The Cow grunted and trudged forward.

  Outside she listened. She heard footsteps from below. But the path above them was clear.

  The warm night air laved the wound at her side. The Cow shuffled to a halt behind her.

  The man was sitting dazed in the path a few feet away. He looked up as they approached and removed his hand from the side of his head. The hand came away bloody.

  She allowed herself a moment of regret. The man had been useful to her in a small way. Given time, he might have been much more so. She had known the wolf in him would turn ruthless in its own interests, in its own defense.

  But the wolf was crippled, unable to escape the voices on the mountain.

  It did not seem to know this. It held its hands palms upward to her in supplication and shook its head as it stared into the impassive mask of her face and tried to rise. It whimpered.

  Perhaps it sensed her intention. Or perhaps it wished simply not to be left behind.

  In either case this was only a man now—the wolf in him had fled.

  The wolf was on the wind.

  So that it was a kindness to the man to swing the ax, to break swiftly and cleanly through the ear and skull, to send half the skull sailing out into the night down the cliffside to the sand below. She watched the body stir, still sitting, as it slowly began to fall and smelled the sudden metallic smell of blood, tantalizing, intoxicating in the salt air.

  The wound in her side wanted feeding.

  She realized suddenly that her entire body did. It had been many hours since the kill and feast of the night before, might be many more till it fed again.

  She must act quickly.

  The steep upward incline would hinder those below for another moment yet.

  She caught the shoulders as they fell and brought the body upright, bent over and set her mouth to the broken lip of the skull and drank deep of the blood and fluid that drooled across the rim—rich, thick, salty—her hands holding the neck and chin to steady him, drinking from the still-warm cup of him, intent on this as the child began to wriggle in its makeshift harness and the Cow reached into the back of her belt and silently withdrew the knife.

  The Cow stared into the open palm of his hand as though the knife had appeared by magic, not his own volition—as though some miracle had got it there.

  In eight years he had seen so many. Knives for skinning and for scraping the skins, for cutting and sectioning meat, and then for feeding. For sharpening sticks or bones like the ones they used to torment him. He had seen knives heated to cauterize wounds or to dig for parasites. Used for killings of animals and men—fast and slow.

  Yet he had never held one.

  The years in chains had made him weak—all but one organ. And that was rising now as his hand closed over the carved bone handle and the Woman fed.

  An image came to him of a man huddled for what must have been weeks in a dark narrow crevice, sealed off from all light and where it was impossible to stand or even kneel, living off the insects that crawled through his feces and the occasional scrap of meat that emerged from the sudden blinding light.

  The man had a name. Frederick. He could not remember the rest.

  But the Woman had put him there, and the Woman had delivered him.

  And by then he was the Cow.

  All the years in chains had made him weak. But not so weak that he could not take the knife in both hands now and drive it into her back, dimly aware of the child only inches from his hands struggling to crawl free of its harness, pushing forward on the knife with all the miserable weight of his flesh and bone, his erection driving too against the smoothness of her thigh in the most pleasurable sensation of his life.

  He squealed, grinning, as she strangled him.

  She shook him like a rag doll and soon his tongue protruded but he would not die, the light in his eyes seemed filled with pleasure and it would not go out, and she marveled that the power of the spirit of the dead infant was such that it had caused even this, had first torn the very structure of her world away from her and now even its sense, so that it was hardly even a surprise to her when the guns sounded and her flesh exploded in a dozen places and plunged them both spinning down the mountain.

  And the last thing she was aware of was Second Stolen’s child torn away from her by the bullets’ impact and its eyes, gazing coldly at her and then into the empty night as it fell away. Unafraid.

  A huntress.

  12:55 A.M.

  Rabbit climbed the tree to the platform.

  He had waited until the woods were silent, until the men in the woods had passed by and he could hear their feet scuffling on the rocks below. And then he had waited further just to make certain and because he was still afraid.

  He was moving through the brush when he heard the guns. So many guns. Then nothing.

  He was sure his people were dead.

  The important thing now was to stay hidden.

  He was Rabbit. Alone now. Learning to be Fox.

  He climbed cautiously, his knife between his teeth, aware of unfamiliar scents from above. Not his. Not Eartheater’s or the Boy’s.

  In the stillness they drifted down to him on slow currents of air. It was almost as though they were visible.

  He smelled fear.

  Faint, distant. A residue.

  But pleasing to him.

  He smelled innocence—the blind security of hatchlings asleep in their nest.

  He raised himself up, peered across the platform. His lips curled smiling off the blade.

  It was what they had been seeking. Through all this night of amazements and destruction. And he, Rabbit, whom the others laughed at and would not listen to, whose smile had always been a sign for them that he was poorly made somehow, had found it. Asleep in a blanket where he had taken Eartheater and the Boy to play. His place.

  He could almost miss them now. There was no one to witness his triumph.

  He rolled onto the platform lightly as a breeze and lay there. The infant beside him slept on. Its mouth was open. Its eyes were closed. He leaned in closer. Its breath smelled
sweet.

  He parted the blanket that covered her legs. The infant was a female.

  The Woman had said they must use the infant’s blood to quench the spirit thirst of the dead child—and that this was for the good of all of them.

  But there was no all of them now.

  Only Rabbit.

  He considered this.

  In his mind he could taste its warm sweet blood.

  And he could almost, but not quite, imagine the other. But time could make it real.

  And he thought that the Woman would approve of his conclusion. That she would not think him quite so stupid after all.

  The infant was female.

  In her, in him, they could begin again.

  He had only to wait and hunt and hide. Ten, eleven summers.

  The Woman would approve.

  He lay beneath a full moon darkened by clouds within the sound of the sea and claimed her.

  He reached for the sleeping child, gathered her into his arms and she opened her eyes, knew who she belonged to now, then heard someone running, running hard toward the tree and a voice farther away call for the runner to stop. He listened to the footfalls and thought, Older, yes, but only another innocent, the boy, though the voice was a man’s voice and much more dangerous, and he crouched and drew the blade.

  It wasn’t like he felt like a hero or anything, but as soon as Luke got them near the treehouse he started getting excited.

  It was as though in all this horrible stuff, with all this going on that made him want to cry and did make him cry—his mom and Amy coming hurt so bad down the mountain, the shooting on the mountain, those people falling so close to where he was standing he could hear them hit like great big sacks of dirt and even the baby falling so that he couldn’t look, he couldn’t, he just hid behind the policeman, then asking about his father and nobody answering and the awful sick smell of the blankets his mother wore as she held him, the way she cried, the blood on Amy’s face—it was as though in all this awful terrible stuff there was one good thing at least. And that was that Melissa was safe. Melissa was all right.

  And he was the one who knew where she was because he had put her there. He felt good about that. So that when one of the policemen said okay show us and another said no wait, take care of these people here and we’ll call it in and then we’ll all go, he was glad his mom insisted that they find her right away, right now before something happened to her, that Luke should show them. He was glad even though it was hard to leave her and even though he thought, What could happen? These people, they were all dead, weren’t they? And Melissa couldn’t crawl yet. She couldn’t crawl and hurt herself. His mom had said she was still too young for that.

  So what could happen?

  Animals, he thought.

  Animals could get her. That scared him for a while. But he didn’t really believe it.

  Sure it was possible but it just didn’t seem right somehow, to have gotten her all this way hidden real well and then have some animal get her. He didn’t believe it at all, he wouldn’t believe it and as he took the group of policemen up the cliff with him the scared feeling went away and he started to feel pretty good. His mom was safe. He was safe. And Melissa was going to be safe, too.

  So he was excited when they got to the treehouse—not some hero, but excited.

  And he didn’t really listen when the officer told him to stop.

  “Up here!” he said.

  And ran out ahead.

  He climbed the steps as fast as he could.

  And the policemen were behind him but they were adults and a whole lot slower and had a whole lot less to be excited about, so they hadn’t even got to the ladder yet when he was up, his head over the top of the platform and he was grinning, he could hardly wait to see Melissa there . . . when this dark sudden shape of something in front of him hissed and rushed forward, and even before he saw the glint of the knife he lost his footing and cried out and started to fall.

  He twisted sideways, trying to hold on to the railing with one arm and flailing with the other and the knife darted past his head. He heard the railing crack as the boy leaned over and tried to stab him but he was still dangling, swinging, trying to grasp hold of something, anything solid with his free right hand—and what he found was the wrist with the knife.

  He found it by mistake. But he didn’t let go because the knife couldn’t cut him that way and something told him to pull so he did pull and that part of the railing the boy was leaning over cracked again—and suddenly the boy let go of the knife, it tumbled away, and grabbed his wrist instead as he broke through the railing and fell, held on to his wrist as he fell the length of him and with his other hand grabbed his leg.

  And started to climb him.

  Agony shot through his arm on the railing. But his feet had found the ladder or else they’d both have fallen.

  Luke had never seen a boy so strong and an instant later they were face-to-face. A face so dirty the dirt seemed a part of him.

  The boy’s breath was hot and it stunk and he was smiling. He saw crazy eyes and twisted brown-black teeth.

  The boy had let go of his wrist and had him by the shoulders. He looked up and around and Luke saw what he meant to do, he was going to pull himself up over Luke’s shoulders onto the platform and then up the tree, maybe into the next tree then and over and he might even make it in the darkness, it would be hard for the policemen to see.

  He heard Melissa crying and thought, What if he takes Melissa so they can’t fire. And then what if he falls? And in the instant that the boy lifted his hand off Luke’s shoulder he got so suddenly mad at him, at all of them and maybe at everybody in the whole damn world who hurt people who never deserved to be hurt that he swung his elbow as hard as he could into the middle of the boy’s ribs.

  As fast as the boy had appeared he was gone.

  Faster.

  One minute he was there and the next he wasn’t. He didn’t even scream.

  Luke didn’t look down.

  He didn’t need to know if the boy was dead. He could tell by the sound. The sound was the same as the people falling off the rocks.

  He didn’t like the sound, but he wasn’t afraid of it either. Not anymore.

  His legs were shaking but he managed the two more steps up to Melissa okay, and then just sat there trembling and breathing and gradually feeling okay again and thinking, I really did this, I helped her, I maybe sort of even saved her—feeling pretty good in fact, letting Melissa hold on to his finger, until the policeman came and got them out of there.

  Melissa smiled at the policeman all the way down.

  It would be nice, Luke thought as he came down the ladder, if his mom had a baby someday. Like Melissa.

  You never knew. Maybe she’d meet some guy.

  It would be nice, he thought.

  If she didn’t, of course, that would be okay too.

  It was good to know it really didn’t matter.

  PART VI

  MAY 13, 1992

  MORNING

  9:45 A.M.

  Peters dreamed that he and Mary dove off a pier into the sea. They were holding hands. They were naked and their bodies were twenty years old, smooth and firm. The sun was warm. They were getting away from someone or something which they did not fear exactly but which troubled them, and that was why they dove into the sea.

  They swam through gentle waves around a short promontory, found sand beneath their feet, and again holding hands, began to emerge from the water.

  Suddenly the beach became the streets of town and Mary realized she was naked. People were going on about their business as usual, not staring, but Mary was a modest woman and Peters was aware of her discomfort at running around town as god made her. He regretted leaving their clothes behind. They hadn’t even any money to buy some.

  He resolved the problem by stopping, turning toward Mary and embracing her.

  “Now they can’t see,” he said.

  She laughed. “George! We’re in
the middle of the street.”

  “That’s the point,” he said. “If we stand here long enough somebody will notice what nice people we are and how in love we are and get us some clothes eventually. Right?”

  “Right,” she said, and hugged him back.

  “It all turns out eventually,” he said.

  And woke up.

  He saw the covers on his bed and his body lying under them and saw that it was possible to move his hands. He dealt with that in amazement for a moment. He saw the hospital room and the flowers. And the people by his bed.

  A woman with a bandaged head, seated in a chair. Nursing a pretty little baby.

  Holding hands with another woman sitting beside him on the bed. The woman wore a light blue hospital gown the same as he did, but the woman was smiling at him, the first to notice he was awake.

  And a boy dressed in jeans and a T-shirt standing by the window, staring out into the sunlight. The boy turned and glanced at Peters and then he smiled too.

  With all these strangers around him smiling Peters had the god-damnedest urge to smile back at them.

  And suddenly he remembered.

  He looked over at the boy from the beach and remembered.

  And then he did smile.

  Hell, these weren’t strangers.

  They didn’t feel like strangers.

  “How’d I do?” he said.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Rave Reviews For Jack Ketchum!

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Part I May 12, 1992

  12:25 A.M.

  1:46 A.M.

  3:36 A.M.

  4:47 A.M.

  5:02 A.M.

  7:20 A.M.

  Part II Afternoon

  11:00 A.M.

  11:50 A.M.

  2:20 P.M.

  2:43 P.M.

  3:25 P.M.

  Part III Evening

  5:35 P.M.

  7:50 P.M.

  Part IV Night

  8:20 P.M.

  8:45 P.M.

  9:15 P.M.