Did she see these bandits dispose of her family’s bodies?
Probably.
Oh, my poor, poor baby!
“Did you burn them?” Soma asked. She did not meet Big Boss’s eyes, just spoke to him through her fingers. She’d covered her mouth with her hand at some point, as if she were afraid she was going to be sick.
“So they didn’t come back? Oh, yeah. Had to do it. We burned them in the back yard. In that big fire pit your pa had back there.”
Soma nodded.
Yes, Aishani had watched them burn the bodies. She had crouched down in the underbrush and watched these marauders haul the bodies of her family out the back door as birds chattered in the trees overhead and grasshoppers jumped in the field. She had watched these men pour gas on the bodies -- wrapped in their own bloody sheets, perhaps -- watched them light her family up, dispose of them like garbage, and then she had run away.
Soma didn’t know how she knew this; she just knew it.
“Are you satisfied now?” Big Boss asked. “Can you die in peace?”
His voice was chillingly bereft of human emotion. No empathy. No pity. This man, Big Boss, was infinitely worse than any brain-dead zombie, Soma thought. He had the capacity for compassion, but no desire to employ it.
Soma nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Now I have a few more questions for you.”
Quid pro quo.
49
As soon as Big Boss left, she began to work at the buckles of her muzzle. She would need her teeth to free herself from the handcuffs.
It was time to go. She had gotten what she needed. She had needed to know what ends her loved ones had come to, but now she knew. Her parents were dead. Her husband was dead. Only Aishani still lived. She was out there somewhere, her daughter, her baby, and Soma was determined to find the girl and get her safely Home. She would find her, sneak her past the zombie tribes that hunted the city of the living and get her to the Promised Land where she could live out the rest of her life in relative peace and security. Or she would die in the attempt. Everyone she loved was dead now but Aishani. Aishani was the only thing that mattered. She was Soma’s only living link to this dead and rotting world.
It was difficult working the buckles with one hand, especially in the dark, but she managed to get a couple of them worked loose, and then she peeled the entire contraption off over her head. She pulled out some of her hair in the process but she barely felt it. She tossed the muzzle away, the little metal buckles tinkling on the floor, and then she shifted around on the cot to get her teeth at her wrist.
Big Boss had left with a satisfied grin. Soma had answered all of his questions as truthfully as possible, and though the man obviously had a few screws loose, he was canny enough to know that she had been honest with him. He had never offered her the raw meat he had brought with him to tempt her. He left it sitting on the shelf to madden her.
“We’ll talk some more tomorrow morning,” he had said before closing her in the darkness, and then he’d departed, Jim Bob following at his heel. Soma had a feeling, the way Big Boss had grinned at her, that “vivisection” was probably more along the lines of what the man was thinking right then, but she had nodded resignedly, as if she had already given up hope.
Hopefully, Soma thought, her teeth poised over the delicate flesh of her wrist, I won’t be here in the morning.
All she had to do was chew through her wrist, snap her hand off to free herself from the shackles, murder whomever was guarding the door up above and sneak away into the forest. It was sunset when Big Boss departed the bomb shelter. She could tell by the coppery tint of the light shining down from above. By now, it should be full dark.
She hesitated, dreading the pain, then sank her teeth into the flesh.
She was afraid the red haze would swoop down once she started eating her own flesh, that she would be swept away, lose control, and awaken to find that she’d eaten her whole arm, or something similarly ghastly, but biting into her own flesh did not trigger the feeding frenzy as the taste of living flesh did. It merely hurt.
Very, very much.
The taste was awful – rancid, rotten flesh. The pain was like being stabbed by great silver needles again and again. She bit to the bone, twisted her head from side to the side and tore away the flesh. She spat the meat from her mouth with a cry and then bent back to the task. She bit into the flesh, severing muscle and skin and veins, pulling, tearing, feeling her cold dead blood trickling down her forearm, down her lips and chin and neck. She had to twist and turn on the cot so that she could get all the meat from around her wrist, front and back. She tried to ignore the taste, tried to spit it all out, but she could not help but swallow a little of it. Finally, when she had gnawed all the flesh from her wrist that she could, she grasped her left hand with her good right hand and twisted it off like a Thanksgiving drumstick. The cartilage tore loose with a gruesome popping sound. Her left hand fell on the cold concrete floor with a meaty plop.
She pulled her arm from the metal cuff, exploring the stump in the darkness -- exposed bone, mangled flesh.
So much pain!
Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now but Aishani. Not pain. Not dismemberment.
Not even murder.
She had to get away. Had to find her daughter. She had chewed off her own hand like an animal in a trap. She would chew her way through whoever was standing guard upstairs, too. Nothing would stand in her way. Nothing and no one.
She started to rise and heard boots clumping down the stairs. Surprise froze her in place, which was probably lucky for her. If had she risen already, things might have ended differently.
The doorknob clattered in the darkness, and then a ribbon of wan light spooled across the floor. A moment later, Donald Duck stumbled into the room. He was breathing heavily, his shirt and face spattered with blood. There was a flashlight in his left hand and a bloody Bowie knife in his right. He smelled of cheap liquor and urine.
“My brother’s dying,” he wheezed. “He’s the only thing I got in this world, and you took him away from me.”
He didn’t see the disembodied hand twitching feebly in the middle of the floor, still animated by the Phage, or notice that she had removed the muzzle from her face. His eyes swam in bloodshot tears, his cheeks and neck splotchy from exertion and high emotion.
This was the man, if she believed Big Boss’s story, who had cut her husband’s throat while he lay sleeping. He and his brother had stabbed Nandi to death as he crawled across the bedroom floor. They had stabbed him in the back like cowards -- probably with the very knife he was holding in his hand right now! The Duck Brothers… the very words were offensive to her now. She recoiled from him in hatred and revulsion.
Did they laugh as they plunged their knives into Nandi’s back? As he crawled across the floor, confused and frightened and dying? Did they high five one another when it was over? They probably thought they were real bad asses for killing an innocent man in his sleep, and how many others had they murdered over the years? How many husbands and fathers had fallen to their treachery? How many children had they hurt? How many women had they raped? His brother was dying? Good! Neither of them deserved to live!
He lunged toward her, seeing only the killing of her in his mind, not that she was free, not that she was rising to meet him, jaw dropping open, right hand reaching for him, fingers curled. Too late, he realized she was much too close to him now, that something had gone wrong with his plans, that her fingers were curling into the fabric of his shirt, catching him, pulling him to her, that her teeth were falling upon the flesh of his throat. He brought the knife up, sinking it into her belly, and then she collided with him, driving him into the door.
He fell back with a strangled squawk of shock and confusion, slamming the door shut behind him. Soma fell with him, howling in rage. The flashlight went flying from his hand, bouncing on the bare concrete floor with a clatter. On the third bounce, something broke loose inside it and they were enve
loped in darkness. Donald’s panicked breaths puffed in her face. She felt the warm, supple flesh of his neck against her lips and drove her teeth into it, chomping down and twisting her head violently side-to-side.
She would have relished his anguished cries, his guttural appeals to a god whose tenets he had never much worried about, but she was no longer thinking, no longer really herself. The dream sea had swept her away, robbed her of reason. Awash in those red tides of forgetfulness, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy, she bit into him over and over. Flesh tearing. Flesh rending between her teeth. Hot blood gushed down the front of her, tickling her breasts, washing down her belly.
She swallowed the half-chewed meat, then bent back to her meal, which was not struggling quite so energetically now.
“Jesus Christ,” Donald Duck groaned as she bit into his shoulder, “you’re eating me alive, lady.”
He spoke almost conversationally, body trembling with shock. He could not see her in the dark, but he could feel her on him, and all his wet warmth gushing down the front of him. It was even in his shorts. He could feel it squishing around his cock and balls as she shifted her body on top of him.
He thought it was funny that he should die with a boner – it was a real knee-slapper, as his old man would have said -- and then her teeth sought out his neck again, and it all went away like a flash of light down a very long, very dark tunnel: the pain and the amusement, and all his memories, too, his brother, his mother, even his dear ol’ dad, until all that remained were a few lingering regrets, and those blinked out a moment before his awareness of them followed.
Soma fed, but Donald was a big fellow and she could only eat a negligible portion of his body – neck and left shoulder mostly and a little of his face – before her stomach revolted. When her tummy began to ache, she slid off his limp carcass and crawled away from him, purring contentedly to herself.
A pool of blood had swelled across the floor while she fed. The stump of her left arm skidded in the warm fluid and she went sprawling. She rolled over and stared into the darkness, smiling as vitality flowed through her body.
That’s where she was when she returned to herself: on her back, grinning up at the ceiling in the dark. Donald’s blood had dried to a glaze on her cheeks, congealed into clumpy scabs in her hair. She could feel it crackling on her skin. Her clothes were stiff with it.
For a moment, she did not know where she was, and then her memories came flooding back, slotting into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She scrambled to her feet and began to feel her way around the dark, wondering how much time had passed while she lay on the floor in a postprandial stupor.
Luckily, she fumbled across Donald Duck’s leg almost immediately.
She felt her way up his body and located the door, but she couldn’t open it until she had dragged his lifeless bulk out of the way, which was no easy task as he weighed about two-fifty and she was missing a hand.
She opened the door, peeked out into the stairwell. It was a little brighter there, the steps illuminated by the fragile blue glow of starlight. Still night then, but how long until her victim was missed? She listened for the sentry up top. Surely, Big Boss would not have tempted Ronald’s brother with guard duty!
Nothing.
She hurried up the stairs, peeked through the doorway. Donald had left it about halfway open.
Soma’s guard lay face down in the dewy grass, obviously dead. She recognized the man by the mass of kinky orange hair above the collar of his red flannel shirt. It was the fellow who had accompanied Jim Bob and Ray when they locked her in the bomb shelter. The back of his shirt was black with blood, and there was a stab wound in the side of his neck.
For a moment, she stood gaping down at the corpse. It was hard to believe the elder Duck brother had killed one of his own to have his revenge on her. Of course, she reminded herself, he had a history of violence. Nothing any of these men did should surprise her by now. What did it matter anyway? She’d seen far worse. The world was a spinning ball of worm-churned compost.
Quit gawking and run!
Good advice.
She started across the yard, headed north rather than south. Perry’s truck was to the south, but north was where her instincts led her. That was the direction Aishani would have run when she fled from the barn.
Soma had only a vague idea how much time separated the two of them in their respective flights, but she intended to follow in her daughter’s footsteps as closely as possible. Perhaps she might stumble across some sign along the way that might indicate the girl’s intentions, where she might have gone, what she might have done.
The windows of the main house were dark, but that was no guarantee everyone was asleep. The windows were probably just blacked out so no passing zombies were drawn to the property. There could be any number of eyes peeping out at her right now. At any moment, she expected the alarm to be raised. The hounds to start baying. Men with guns.
She ran through the dewy grass, more of a trot really, clutching the wound in her side. She only vaguely remembered the elder Duck brother stabbing her, and it didn’t really hurt -- not as bad as her stump hurt, anyway -- but she didn’t want anything falling out of her as she tried to escape. A liver, a kidney… Wouldn’t kill her either way, but she might trip over any dangling organs. She would examine the wound when she’d safely gotten away. Maybe she could find a needle and thread and sew herself up.
Or a stapler.
She heard the clanking of a chain and a dog’s inquisitive woof as she crossed the side lawn, but the hound, wherever it was, did not start barking. She skirted around the fire pit in the back (trying very hard not to imagine her husband and parents burning in it) and scurried toward the back field.
The moon was a bright, leering skull. She felt terribly exposed as she limped across the open field, but the woods on the far side were dark and dense. She kept her eyes on the forest and tried to put everything else out of her mind. When she was a girl, Soma had feared those woods. She had been quite certain some very scary creatures haunted that wilderness – mostly due to her father’s tall tales about the “Brookville Wildman” -- but the forest looked quite welcoming to her now. All judgments, she thought absently, were informed by immediate circumstance. The creepiest woods could look quite attractive when you needed to pull a disappearing act.
She saw a game trail and immediately knew this was where Aishani would have entered the forest if she had fled there from the barn. It was an old trail, one she remembered from her own childhood. Soma plunged into the forest like a swimmer diving into a prickly surf. A dozen sharp limbs clawed at her face and plucked at her clothes as the woodland enveloped her. The brittle duff that covered the forest floor crunched like cereal under her feet as she followed the game trail deeper into the wilderness.
Free!
She took a deep breath (a pure affectation) and continued at a more relaxed pace. She searched for signs of Aishani’s passage as she moved deeper into the forest, putting more and more distance between herself and her captors.
She realized she had fled into the forest without stopping to look back and felt remiss. She would never see the old home place again. She should have stopped, if even for an instant, and cast her gaze back. Fixed the place in her memory.
Soma paused and turned back toward the farmhouse, but she had penetrated too deeply into the forest to see it. It would exist only in her memories now, like the life she had led before the outbreak, like Nandi, like her parents… like Perry.
Only she remained, and the hope she held that Aishani might still live.
A few minutes later, that hope was gone as well.
50
She found Aishani in one of the trenches Nandi had dug.
After fleeing to her parents’ home during the outbreak, Nandi had decided to encircle the farm with spiked trenches. He completed about half the task before running out of ambition -- as well as diesel for the backhoe. He had placed sharpened stakes in most of those trenches. H
is hope was that any approaching deadheads would fall into the trenches and impale themselves before reaching the farm and endangering anyone, but he had abandoned the plan after their retreat into the bomb shelter. Very few deadheads ever ventured onto her father’s property. It was just so remote, and the steep hills that surrounded the farm formed a sort of natural barrier, as zombies tended to follow the path of least resistance. After a while, when they found no zombies impaled in any of his trenches, it just seemed like a waste of time, especially when there were so many other things that needed to be done around the farm, like growing food and tending to the animals and hauling water to the house and maintaining the property. He had worked on the project feverishly at first and then gave it up all at once, like a man abandoning a great obsession. He had talked about finishing it after they came out of the bomb shelter, but had always found something else to occupy his time.
It was obvious what happened to Aishani, because Soma fell into the trench as well.
She was following the same game trail that Aishani had taken the night her father and grandparents were murdered. Due to the angle of the slope, and an unpropitious patch of moon shadow, Nandi’s trench was simply invisible. Soma stepped across an exposed root, looking toward the rocky ridge ahead, and was falling before she could catch herself.
She landed hard, got a face full of dirt. She also got a spike in her guts – probably a stake she had sharpened herself. She lay for a moment, dizzy and in pain, before pushing herself to her hands and knees. Well, hand and knees. She winced as the stake withdrew from her belly. Thankfully, the stake was only two or three feet long, or she might have been stuck on it like a bug on a pin. It had also missed her spinal cord – another stroke of luck. And she had only landed on one.
Aishani was not so lucky.
Soma (The Fearlanders) Page 31
