by Steven Novak
By morning I was soaked and freezing, my hair crunchy with ice. Father wasn’t there. He hadn’t found me, or kissed my forehead, or told me that we were done searching. None of that happened. It was still raining and I was still alone.
Most of the day was spent staring through the cracks of a boarded window facing the road. I saw nothing. The hours rolled on. The sun moved from one side of the sky to the other and dropped below the horizon. The moment it was gone I returned to my closet.
For three days I waited, hopeless, moving from the closet to the window and back to the closet again. It was longer than my father instructed and I didn’t care. I couldn’t just leave him. I had no idea where I would go. I wasn’t as strong as Father believed or Mother had hoped. I wasn’t very strong at all. At some point during my third night, cramped and shivering in the tiny closet, I stopped crying. I’m not sure why. The tears just dried up and went away. There weren’t any left. My body shut down. I was sore and tired, lips cracked and throat raw. Swallowing was agony and the hunger pangs worse. Somehow, I managed to sleep. A quiet nothing settled in, gentle and weightless. So quiet. Father and Mother visited me in my dreams. Mother braided my hair into a tight ponytail to keep it off my neck. She zipped my jacket and wiped a smudge from my face. She gave me an extra helping of food and smiled so earnestly as I gobbled it up, despite her hunger. She kissed me on the cheek, her nose near my ear, warming breath against my face. When she sighed, she tilted her head slightly to the left. I giggled at her dimples. Father appeared over her shoulder, gazing down at me with a grin, the sun peeking through the clouds just over his head. It was all so beautiful. The clouds parted. I’d never seen the sun without the clouds. It was amazing.
Father brushed the hair from his eyes. “Look at this shit.”
Mother’s expression turned to stone. “Someone’s here.” She squeezed my shoulders, mouth open. Her teeth turned black, crumbling like ash and sliding down her throat. “Over there.”
Father ripped me from her arms and lifted me into the air. He was terrified. He was disappointed. His grip was like iron and his fingers like howler teeth, ripping into my flesh. Behind him the sun began to crumple. It folded inward, cracked like glass, crinkled like burning paper. Father shook his head, mouthing something I couldn’t hear. Suddenly he was moving backward. When I reached for him, I gripped only air. His face turned to dirt, caught a distant breeze and began to scatter. A billion points of sand disappeared into the darkness, swallowing him. His eyes had become the absence of everything. His nose exploded into barely-there shimmers of something unworldly. Before his mouth did the same, the sandy outline his lips had become mouthed a single word: “Run.”
“Holy shit, it’s a kid.” Dirty hands ripped me from the safety of my closet. A crooked grin of yellow teeth greeted me when I opened my eyes. “It’s a goddamn kid!”
He was tall and filthy, face coated in grime, hair wild and stiff. He lifted me into the air. I was weightless. I was helpless. I kicked my feet defiantly. Another set of hands snagged my legs and pulled them tight. Suddenly I was horizontal, squirming and clawing at anything within reach. When I tried to scream a hand covered my mouth.
Another voice from somewhere behind, gnarly like cracked glass: “Feisty one!”
Coarse fingers gripped my ankles. “Hold her legs! Get a hold on her goddamn legs!”
“Won’t stop wiggling!”
“Hold her still, asshole!”
No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move. There were too many of them. The group of men surrounded me, laughing, a congealed lump of awful hands and arms foiling every attempt at escape. Out of sheer desperation, I bit one of the fingers covering my mouth. When he screamed, I smiled. I tasted blood. My face hit the floor, and the air left my lungs.
Everything went black.
When I woke, my legs were bound, arms tied behind my back, the ground bouncing beneath me. We were moving, driving. The interior of my lips tasted like dirt and metal, the aftertaste of blood. Tattered fabric soaked with the accumulated stains of post war hell was stuffed in my mouth and knotted at the rear of my head. Duffel bags crammed with scavenged goods boxed me like bookends. Just above me, a pair of legs. I followed them upward to a scruffy dark-haired man nursing a blood-soaked hand.
He noticed I was awake and smiled a terrifying smile. When he spoke, he growled. “How’ya doin’, precious?”
When I cried, he chuckled.
It wasn’t too long after that I recognized the familiar stone of the compound walls through the soot-coated window to my left. The walls seemed even larger up close, dark and dangerous, the jaws of some great beast. I thought of Father. They were taking me to Father. When the car came to a stop, a door behind me opened. Hands grabbed my ankles, pulled me into the light. A crowd had gathered, one grinning, twisted face after another, lined up like soldiers. A dark-skinned man with a scar running from the top of his head to the hem of his shirt tossed me over his shoulder. Gritty hands with filthy nails pawed at my body. The sunken face of a skeleton leaned in close and wiped the tears from my face, breathily whispering the world pretty while licking nonexistent lips.
“What do you want me to do with her?” Scarface was talking to someone I couldn’t see. When I tried to wiggle free, someone smacked me on the back of the head. Even after I’d stopped, they smacked me again. The group laughed.
“Dump her in the east wing. I’ll let Travis know about her.”
A few from the crowd followed along as Scarface carried me through the interior of the compound, rotted teeth clattering as they cackled. I opened my eyes in intervals, catching only the briefest glances of my surroundings, unable to get my bearings. There were small fires everywhere, pieces of unspecified meat roasting on spigots just above the flames. We passed a pile of bones, only half of which I recognized. A row of fifteen men crouched against a wall in the distance, thin and shivering, steel collars around their necks with chains attaching them. As we passed, a man at the rear of the chain lifted his head long enough to stare at me, eyes the color of rain, silver-blue and unblinking. He didn’t look away. His eyes narrowed. His brow furrowed. Even as we moved from his line of sight, disappearing behind a row of tents, he never looked away. A moment later we approached a row of unassuming, poorly-made buildings, patched with pieces of scavenged steel. The inhuman screams from inside sent a shiver along my spine and into my legs. I’d heard similar screams before, howlers, lots of howlers. Whoever these people were, they were keeping howlers as pets.
We stopped at a small shed near the center of the compound. Scarface unlocked the door and tossed me inside. I landed on my knees, and then my head. The head hurt more. I rolled to my side, pulled my legs close to my chest, and buried my face in them. I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to stop crying. I needed to stop crying. Yet I couldn’t stop crying.
Scarface kicked a cloud of sand in my direction. I inhaled it through my nose, into my lungs. My cried turned to coughs.
“Shut up.”
The door slammed shut. The darkness folded in. Three locks clicked. I remember every one of them, so very simple and so very terrifying. They were the worst sounds I’d ever heard, cold and finite, the echoes of my mistakes. Though I tried my best to remove the idea from my head, I couldn’t help but wonder if my father had heard them as well.
I’m not entirely sure how long I remained in that tiny room before I heard the locks again. It felt like hours. Could have been minutes. The air was stale, dank. It lingered on my lips, clung to my skin and stung my eyes. After the last of the three locks clicked, the door across from me opened. A tall man with short-trimmed hair stepped inside, dragging a chair. He face was clean-shaven, his hair neatly trimmed. He set the chair a few feet from my face, sat down, and crossed his legs. I’d never seen anyone cross their legs. He straightened his shirt, adjusted his collar. He looked fresh, cleaner than anyone I’d ever met, except for his boots. I remember his boots. His boots seemed massive, caked with bits
of dirt and filth the color of blood. I closed my eyes and turned my head. His knuckles cracked.
It was at least a minute before he spoke. “Hello, little one.” His voice was softer than I expected, almost inviting in a weird sort of way. “I just need to ask you a few questions. Won’t take long, I promise. Think you’re up for that?”
When I didn’t respond, he nudged me with his boot. “Come on, sweetie. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. No one is going to hurt you.”
I felt his hand on my head, long, skinny fingers gently brushing my hair, tucking it behind my ear the way mother would sometimes do. “Just a few quick questions and we’ll get you out of here, okey dokey?”
My head nodded. I didn’t want it to.
It didn’t care.
Bloodboots dug his hands into my armpits, lifted and maneuvered me into a sitting position against a wooden crate. He cupped my chin and adjusted my head while using his thumb to wipe the dirt and tears from my eyes. “There you are. Much better. Little girls shouldn’t be covered in dirt. It’s not ladylike.” Again he brushed the hair from my eyes. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
My throat locked, lips quivered.
“Do you have a name? Would it help if I told you mine first?”
Again my stupid head nodded.
“I’m Travis. I’m sort of the man in charge around here.” I felt his hand on my shoulder, fingers softly kneading my skin. “Do you have a name? I bet you have a name. Pretty girl like you, I bet you have a really pretty name.”
“M-M-Me-Megan.”
Stupid mouth. Even with my eyes closed, I could somehow sense he was smiling. I was giving him exactly what he wanted. My breath was slowing and my eyes drying, two more things I didn’t want to happen, two more things I seemed to have no control over.
Bloodboots sat back in his chair and I heard it creak. He crossed his legs again and sighed. “Were you all alone out there, Megan? All by yourself?”
Father. I couldn’t tell him about Father. I shouldn’t tell him ab—“I was with my father.”
Stupid.
For a moment it was quiet, so quiet I could hear Bloodboots swallow, so quiet I recognized the subtle sound of teeth grinding. “Just you and your pops, huh sweetie? Just the two of you alone against the world, huh? Hell, if that’s the case, it’s pretty remarkable you survived out there as long as you did. Goddamn amazing. Your daddy must be a heck of a guy, huh, a real survivor? Where is he, Megan? Where’d that amazing dad of yours run off to?”
My limbs locked. I bit my tongue. “I-I don’t know.” It wasn’t a lie.
“It’s okay, Megan. Take your time and think. How many people are with you and your daddy? It can’t just be the two of you. That’s silly. Do I look like the kind of guy who likes silly stories?”
“I-don’t kno—”
“Yes you do, sweetie. Try real hard to remember.” His voice was changing, half a whisper and half a growl, eerily monotone.
“I-I-I do-don—”
“Yes you do. You’re not a little girl. You’re old enough to count and smart enough to remember. No one is going to hurt you if you tell me what I want to know.”
When I lowered my head again, Bloodboots returned it to its upright position. This time the act was more violent. It hurt my neck. “Who else is out there? Where are they and why did they leave you alone?”
My breath turned ragged. My chest heaved. Dry lips mouthed words devoid of substance or meaning. The next time he touched me, Bloodboots wasn’t so sweet. He was done pretending. His fist snagged a handful of hair and jerked my head backward violently. Suddenly I could feel his breath on my face, inches away, spittle spraying my cheeks. When he stood from his chair, he dragged me with him, whipping me against a nearby wall and sending a jolt of pain across the whole of my back and into my legs.
“I have little patience for little girls, princess.” His face moved again to mine. He was hunched over me, bent like a scarecrow, a malformed mess of jagged angles and coiled muscles. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re only good for one thing, girly, and you’re barely good for that yet.”
His hands coiled into fists. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Before you respond, I want you to think very, very hard about what you’re going to say. Double-check your work in that cute little head of yours. Ask yourself if it’s the answer I want to hear before you spit it from your lips, because I won’t ask again. There will be no more questions from this point on, Megan. To be perfectly honest, your answer won’t change what’s going to happen to you, nothing can. However, it might determine how badly it’s going to hurt.”
Outside, something exploded. Something else collapsed. Gunshots followed by a howl, then two more. Bloodboots let loose my hair as the door to the tiny shack swung open and Scarface stepped inside.
He removed a handgun from a holster on his hip. “We’ve got a problem, Travis. Goddamn howlers are loose.”
3.
Bloodboots shoved me to the floor. The back of my head hit the edge of a table and the front hit the dirt. He moved close to Scarface, teeth bared, hand already reaching for the gun strapped to his belt. “What? How?”
“Looks like someone snapped the locks on the stables. Bastards are loose all over the barracks.”
Bloodboots kicked the wall beside him and the shelter wobbled. “Damn it!” Outside a howler roared. A gun fired. A man screamed, and then another. Things were getting louder by the second, coming in bunches, building to awful crescendo. Bloodboots looked at me just once before leaving, eyes wild and teeth bared. He readjusted the grip on his gun, brought it to his face, and glared at me over the barrel. For a moment I thought he was going to shoot me. A part even wanted him to.
He didn’t.
Instead, he just stared, eyes narrowed, upper lip twitching. A noise emerged from his throat, an annoyed growl. With Scarface leading the way, he exited the room and charged into the fray. The door slammed shut, three locks clicked, and I was alone. I should have tried to wiggle free of my binds. There was a small window on the opposite end of the room—boarded up, but not very well. I could have pried those boards loose and created an opening just large enough for me to slide through. Once outside, I could have run. I could have kept running until my legs gave way and I couldn’t run anymore. I could have at least lifted myself off the floor.
I didn’t.
Instead, I did nothing at all. I cried into the floor. I closed my eyes and mashed my face into the wood and filth. I thought of mother, the look on her face that day on the side of the road, the last time I saw her. Even though we were with her, father beside her with his fingers in her hair and his lips on her cheek, she was alone. Whatever she was going through in that moment, belonged only to her. Whatever she was seeing, only she could see. My mother died alone. Maybe we all die alone. Maybe there’s no other way.
In the midst of the noise outside, I heard the locks again, three of them in close succession. I didn’t know if it was Scarface or Bloodboots or any of the greasy, disgusting men that pawed me when I was carried into the compound. I told myself it didn’t matter. Whoever they were, they weren’t done with me. This was only the beginning. It was going to hurt. Bloodboots said it would hurt. I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst.
The door swung open. A hand grabbed my forearm, lifted me into the air. “Get up.” The voice wasn’t familiar. I didn’t recognize it and I didn’t care to. It wasn’t Scarface and it wasn’t Bloodboots. It wasn’t Father or Mother. It didn’t matter.
“Damn it, kid!”
He was hurried, impatient. “Don’t have time for this.”
Whoever he was, I was suddenly on his shoulder, bouncing as we sped through a warzone. Something hit the ground behind us, a mound of dirt tossed fifteen feet into the air and another after that. Gunshots came in multiples, spitting in bursts, destroying everything, whizzing past my face. Something collapsed. Rusted steel bent and old wood snapped. Somewhere behind me, something exploded. Then another
, this time much closer. In every direction there was madness. My ears were ringing, my face covered in a layer of soot. Through tear-soaked eyes, I watched a massive creature, fifteen feet tall and engulfed in flames, slam into the side of jeep. The gargantuan beast lifted half the vehicle off the ground, nearly tipping it over. I could smell its hair burning, hear the agony in its screams. The smell was beyond words. I’d never encountered anything like that smell. When it opened its fiery mouth to roar, a spatter of bullets tore into its back, rippling up its spine and transforming flesh into tattered meat. Something else exploded nearby. I could feel it reverberate in my skull. Thinking my ears were bleeding, I covered them with my hands and pressed tight. We passed a man curled up in the dirt, blood-soaked fingers dug into the flesh of his face, half his head engulfed in crackling orange and red. Even when I closed my eyes I could see him, an impossible silhouette of black on black, a wild burst of sound against a wall of nothing.
Shortly after, the insanity began to fade. I didn’t know where we were or where we were headed, but we were getting further away with every step. I bounced atop my savior’s shoulder for nearly ten minutes, the smell of sulfur and scorched fur evaporating into the night. Twigs snapped under the weight of boots. A branch tangled itself in my hair, broke from its tree and bounced along with us. Keeping my hands on my ears, I opened my eyes. The walls of the compound were gone, replaced by the dried out darkness of the forest. The man carrying me stopped, breath ragged, chest heaving. He leaned forward and I slid off his shoulder into the dirt and onto my rear.
That’s when I recognized his face: eyes the color of rain, silver-blue and unblinking. It was the man from the courtyard, the one with the light hair, the one who stared at me and refused to look away.
