by R. W. Ridley
“Why did you people let me eat that much?” She asked in between groans. “That stuff is evil.”
Gordy giggled. “You sure seemed to be enjoying it while you were eating it.”
“It’s not funny,” she said, “I think I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying, sweetie,” Wes said, “You’re just suffering from what people call buyer’s remorse.”
“No,” she said, “I’m just suffering, and you people don’t care.”
“It’s hard to feel bad for you,” Tyrone said. “Lou tried to talk you out of it.”
“Shut up, Tyrone! I’m dying here. Somebody help me.”
“You got any ideas?” I asked Wes.
He scratched his beard. “Make her puke.”
“How?” I asked.
He pondered the question and then said, “That whiskey of Bostic’s should do it.”
“No,” Bostic said under a thick hoarse tone. “Vinegar. Under sink. Spoonful.”
“Seriously?” Gordy asked
He nodded and closed his eyes again.
Lou found the vinegar. “Bring her out to the back deck.”
Tyrone and I helped April to her feet and followed Lou out to the back deck.
“Tilt her head back,” Lou said.
We did as she asked.
“Open your mouth, April.”
“No.”
“Open her mouth,” Lou said to Tyrone and me.
Tyrone pinched her nose and I pushed on her cheeks until her mouth opened.
“Need a spoon?” Wes asked.
“Nope,” Lou said with a smile as she poured vinegar down April’s throat.
April gagged and coughed and hacked so violently that Tyrone and I were forced to let go. She fell to her hands and wheezed liked somebody had kicked her in the stomach. “Are you trying to kill me?” she said in between attempts to stop coughing.
“Did you swallow any?” Lou asked.
“Yes,” April said. “How could I not...” She stopped mid-sentence. “Oh God, I’m going to be sick.”
“Get her to the railing,” Wes said.
Tyrone and I half-dragged, half-carried her to the railing just as she started to spew her guts out. Chunks of half eaten Myrmidon meat shot out of her mouth like she was a meat fountain. It was one of the most disgusting and awesome things I have ever seen.
“I think I’m going to be sick now,” Tyrone said.
The vomiting went on and on. There didn’t seem to be any end in sight. Her once protruding stomaching literally shrank before our eyes. She was emptying her stomach. She finally heaved one last time.
“That it?” I asked.
She remained on her hands and knees and spit out what remained in her mouth. “God, I hope so.”
“Feel better?” Wes asked.
She shifted from her knees to her butt and sat down. “I think I do.” She looked around, clearly dazed from the vomiting. “How did I get out here?”
“Me and Oz dragged you out here so you wouldn’t throw up in the house,” Tyrone said.
She closed one eye and pressed a finger against her eyelid. “Got a serious headache. What happened?”
“What do you mean?” Wes asked.
“Why am I so sick?”
Wes got down on one knee. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
She fluttered her eyelid. “I remember sitting down at the counter and taking a bite of the steak.” She smiled. “It tasted incredible.”
“You don’t remember anything after that?” Wes asked.
She thought about it and said, “Nothing. Not until just now.”
Wes stood. “We’ve gotta get rid of that meat.”
“Can’t.”
We all turned to see Bostic standing in the doorway.
“What do you mean we can’t?” Wes asked.
“Need it,” he said holding his hand over his bandaged throat.
“Like a junkie needs drugs,” Wes said. “That stuff will kill you.”
Bostic carefully shook his head. “Keeps alive.” He pointed to himself, “Me.” And then pointed at April. “Now her.”
“What are you saying?” Wes asked.
Lou answered before Bostic had a chance. “He’s saying that they’ll die without the meat. Aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“How?” I said.
Bostic shrugged. “You eat. You need.”
“If you eat it, you need it to keep living,” Lou said.
“Wait,” April said, “what are you saying?”
“You can’t live without that meat,” Lou said.
“That’s messed up,” Gordy said.
April shook her head. “I’m not eating that meat again. No way. I don’t care how good it tastes. I feel awful... worse than awful.”
“No choice,” Bostic said.
“What did you do?” Wes asked walking toward Bostic.
I stepped in front of him. “Let’s not do that again.”
Wes looked down at me, “We should have let you rip his throat out.”
“Wish you had,” Bostic said.
“Why did you do this to me?” April said in tears.
Bostic shrugged and simply said, “Alone.”
“You did this because you don’t want to be alone?” Lou asked.
He nodded and bowed his head.
“So you figured giving somebody a life sentence would keep them hanging around?” Wes asked. “Why? Because you’re fool enough to hunt those things?”
“He has to hunt those things to stay alive,” I said.
Wes furrowed his brow. “Why so forgiving all of a sudden?”
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s just that the last time things started out this way between you and Bostic, I almost killed him. I’m trying to avoid that.”
“I don’t know why,” Wes said. “He tried to get all of us to eat that meat. He was trying to get us dependent on that stuff.”
Bostic looked up. “That’s what junkies do.”
“I’m going to die,” April said burying her face in her hands.
Lou knelt beside her and put her hands around April’s shoulders. “No, you’re not. We’ll fix this.”
“How?” April asked.
Lou looked for someone else to answer so I chimed in, “We’ll figure it out.” I turned to Bostic. “Starting with you. Tell us what you know.”
“Nothing to tell,” He said wincing in pain after he swallowed. “One bite, and you’re done. Makes you feel superhuman then super crappy.”
“Was it the worms or the meat that done the others in your party in?” Wes asked.
Bostic hesitated and then said, “Both.”
“Both?” Lou asked.
“Feeling superhuman makes you do stupid things. Careless things. Being fearless makes you dead.”
Wes looked at me to make sure I’d heard what he’d just said, an echo of what he’d had told me earlier.
“How come you’re not dead?” Wes asked.
“Lucky,” Bostic said.
“How often do you have to eat it?” I asked.
“The more you eat the longer you can go.”
“How about what April ate?”
“A day.”
“A day?” April said.
“Longer if she hadn’t puked.”
“How long will your supply last?”
“A week. If the Ratty-Bobs don’t steal it.”
“That’s why he was here?”
Bostic nodded.
“Great,” Wes said. “Now we got Ratty-Bobs to worry about, too? Can’t they kill their own Myrmidons?”
“Not hunters. Scavengers,” Bostic said.
I looked at April and couldn’t help but feel bad for her. She was annoying most of the time, but she was still one of us. I headed for the door and squeezed past Bostic.
“Where you going?” Wes asked.
“If they’re scavengers, then they know we got the meat.” I said going to the kitchen with everyone el
se but April and Lou following me.
“So?” Wes asked.
“So,” I said grabbing one of the bags of meat. “I’m going to give them some.”
“No,” Bostic said almost hysterically.
“You don’t have a choice in the matter,” I said. “I’ll trade them meat for information.”
“Information on what?” Wes asked.
“On what they know about the meat,” I said.
“And if they don’t know any more than our idiot friend here?”
“Then at least we’ll know that much.”
I walked to the front door.
“How do you expect to find them?” Wes asked.
“I don’t. I expect they’ll find me.”
Wes caught up to me before I exited the house. “Hold up. You gotta take someone with you.”
“No,” I said. “Too many people will scare them off. I’ve got a better chance of drawing them in if I go alone.”
“Then let me go,” Wes said.
“Won’t work. You’re too big. I’m just a kid. They won’t see me as a threat.”
Wes gritted his teeth after thinking my logic over. “Why in the hell do you always to have this stuff figured out right?” He stooped down behind the door and came back up with a crossbow and a quiver of arrows. “At least take this.”
“They see a weapon, and I’ll never draw them in.”
“You can’t go out there unprotected.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you not see what I did to Bostic?”
He nodded.
“I think that pretty much shows I can take care of myself.”
He shook his head. “Damn it. There you go again being right.”
***
I stopped and rested at a small platform on the treeway. I had no idea how far I had traveled. It felt like I had been walking for an hour. It was dark, and there were noises coming from the forest below me that constantly made me rethink my decision to do this alone. The other Myrmidons must have discovered what we had done by now, and I was pretty sure they were going to want to settle the score.
I sat with my sack of Myrmidon meat and tried to convince myself that I was safe up in the treeway. The monkey was gone. We hadn’t seen another one. And if the Myrmidons did come, they’d make a lot of noise clomping through the woods.
I heard a tree branch snap, but I wasn’t sure if it came from above or below me. I shifted to my left and scanned the woods below. It was unnaturally still. Nothing was moving.
Another tree branch snapped.
I rolled to my right and scanned the other side. Nothing.
I rolled back over and screamed bloody murder when I saw a Ratty-Bob standing over me.
“I seen you,” he said. Half his face was hidden under the hood of his sweatshirt. “I seen you at Bostic’s.”
I nodded and scooted back on the platform. “I’m Oz.”
“You don’t know Bostic, does you?” His lips were chapped, and he was missing at least one front tooth.
“I know enough not to like him that much,” I said.
The Ratty-Bob displayed his half-toothed grin. “He ain’t one to like, that one.” He sniffed the air. “That jubilee meat you got in that sack?”
“Jubilee meat?”
The Ratty-Bob shuffled his feet and did a little dance, “Jubilee meat. Jubilee meat. Makes me dance on my feet. Jubilee meat. Jubilee meat. Makes my heart go beat, beat, beat.”
I stood. “It is.”
He pulled back his hood and revealed the rest of his battered face. He was covered in red blotches and one of his ears was missing. “What you gonna do with that jubilee meat?”
I held up the sack. “I brought it for you.”
His eyes opened wide, and he clapped his hands together.
“I want some information first.”
“Max ain’t got no information,” he said.
“Who’s Max?”
The Ratty-Bob held up his filthy hand. “I am. Max is me. Max, Max, Max.”
“How do you know you don’t have the information?” I asked.
He bobbed his head from left to right. “Because I know what information I got, and I ain’t got no information.”
I started to regret my trip out into the darkness to find the Ratty-Bobs.
“My people got information,” he said.
I put the sack behind my back. “Where are your people?”
“Around and around,” he said pointing randomly. He stopped and clasped his hands together. “They’re around.”
“Take me to them,” I said.
He nodded his head anxiously. “Can’t do that. No, no, no. Can’t, can’t, can’t. My people don’t like strangers.”
“You don’t get the jubilee meat if you don’t take me to them.”
He wrung his hands. “Jubilee meat. Jubilee meat. Makes me dance on my feet. Jubilee meat. Jubilee meat. Makes my heart go beat, beat, beat.”
“I walk in ten seconds and take the meat with me.”
“They really don’t like strangers,” he said nervously.
“That’s okay, I’m sure I won’t like them either.”
“You’ll give me the meat?”
“After you take me to your people.”
He held his clasped hands up and squeezed tightly. “I’ll have to share. They’ll all want some.”
“That’s between you and your people.”
“What do I do? What do I do?”
I showed him the sack again.
“Let me see it?”
I opened the sack and held it out.
He reached for it.
I pulled it away. “No touching.”
He ran his fingers through his hair and let out a high pitched groan. Finally, he leaned forward and looked in the bag. He barked out a giggle. “So much jubilee meat.”
“Ten pounds at least,” I said closing the sack.
“Ten pounds?” His face lit up. “I can share that with my people. That’s enough for everybody.”
I hoisted the bag over my shoulder. “Offer ends in three seconds.”
“Yes!” he said so loudly that it shook the leaves above us. He stared at me and said calmly, “Yes, I’ll take you to my people.” He chewed his dirty fingernails and stared at me.
“Which way?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said. “I’ll show you. Follow me.”
He headed down the treeway, but stopped halfway on the expanse. Kneeling down, he grabbed the top of a small tree and jumped off the bridge, riding the tree to the ground as it bent to his weight.
“What are you doing?” I asked as if he’d just jumped in front of a speeding truck.
“Taking you to my people?”
“What about the worms?”
“You’ve got the jubilee meat.”
“So,” I said.
“Worms don’t like the smell.” He lifted his leg and bent it so I could see the bottom of his shoe. “We soak our shoes in the grease. Keeps them away.”
I hesitated and then tied the sack closed. I wasn’t nearly as graceful as Max was getting down, but I managed somehow without letting go of the meat. Once I was on the ground, I stood still and watched for any signs of the worms surfacing. “You sure about this?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t be on the ground if I wasn’t,” Max said. “You got the jubilee meat. It’ll keep you safe, safe, safe.
He moved through the brush, and I followed.
***
We entered a clearing in a valley between two mountains when Max cupped his hands together and blew through them. He made a foghorn-like whistling sound.
“They ain’t gonna like you. No, sir. Not one bit.” he said. “Don’t do nothing to give them reason to kill you.”
My spine stiffened. “What would give them reason?”
“Well,” he said after making the whistle sound again, “talking for one.”
I almost responded with an outraged “What?” but I stopped myself.
I watched as seve
n figures approached from the other side of the clearing. They all had hoods draped over their heads and they walked as if they were stalking prey. I hoped Bostic was right about them being scavengers and not hunters.
The group stopped just far enough away that I couldn’t make out faces, ages, or sexes. I had no idea what I was dealing with.
The Ratty-Bob in the middle separated himself from the others. “No strangers, Max. We done gone over this a million times.”
“But he come for information. He’s got jubilee meat to trade for it. Jubilee meat tastes so sweet.”
The group chattered in excitement. The leader held up his hand to silence them. “What kind of information?”
“I need to know more about this meat,” I said.
There was a brief moment of silence before the leader asked. “You’ll give it to us if we tell you about the meat?”
“I will.”
“How much?”
“Ten pounds,” Max said excitedly.
The chatter picked up again.
“Bring it here,” the leader said.
Max and I did as requested. There were seven men, all filthy, all missing teeth and various other body parts. One was missing a hand. Another an eye. They were not living nearly as well as Bostic.
The leader was taller and older than the others, but he wasn’t in any better condition. His name was Thomas, and once I showed him the meat he smiled with the others.
“You really gonna give us this?” he asked.
“If you tell me what you know about jubilee meat.”
He shrugged. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“How to survive without it?”
Thomas coughed out a laugh and the others joined him. “Goodness, why would you want to do a thing like that?”
“I have a friend I’m trying to help out.”
“What’s wrong with your friend?”
“She ate some of the meat.”
“She don’t need help then,” Thomas said. “Everything’s fixed for her now.”
“I don’t see it that way,” I said. “She doesn’t either.”
“She doesn’t?” He said, clearly confused. He turned and whispered something to a member of his group and then turned back. “Ain’t no way to live without the jubilee meat once you have a taste. That’s just the way it is.”
I sighed. “Don’t tell me that.”
“You asked for information. That’s the information we got.”
I gritted my teeth. “Wes was right. I should have ripped out Bostic’s throat.”
