“No.” Head ringing, a warm brackish taste filling her mouth, Alex spat blood. “How can you just stand there?”
“Because it’s better than getting beat up.” To her left, a surlylooking woman with the hard edge of an ex-biker queen snorted. “If you’re smart, you’ll just be thankful they gave you a pass and shut the hell up.”
“Sharon’s right.” Ruby’s eyes were wild. “Just go along. You—” Whatever else Ruby had been about to say ended in an ulp as Slash slid her hand around the old woman’s twig of a neck and squeezed.
“What are you doing?” Alex cried. Ruby’s eyes bugged; her scrawny limbs thrashed in a spastic herky-jerky dance as her mouth flew open, but there was no sound, not even a squawk. “Stop!”
“Sweet Jesus.” It was a barrel-chested man, near the end of the line, whom she would later learn was Ruby’s husband, Ray. His face was ashen with horror. “For God’s sake, just cooperate and she’ll let her go!”
“All right.” When Slash only bared her teeth in a ferocious grin, Alex screamed, “All right, all right, you bitch, you win! I’ll look, okay? Just let her go!”
Still grinning, Slash held onto Ruby’s neck for another fraction of a second, then spread her fingers.
“Gunh!” Gagging, her face the color of a fresh bruise, Ruby tumbled to the snow, nearly pulling Alex down as well. Alex halfturned, moving on instinct to help the retching old woman to her feet, before she caught movement and looked up to see Slash closing in again.
“I’m not.” Straightening, Alex raised her bound wrists in a hasty surrender. “I’m not helping. Okay? See? I’m watching.”
“Atta girl,” the ex-biker queen muttered. Her name was Sharon, but Alex wouldn’t know that until an hour after Wolf gouged the little woman’s eyes from their sockets, sucking each from a finger like the soft chewy center of a naked Tootsie Pop.
“You’re learning,” Sharon said as Wolf closed in. “Go along to get along.”
Another thing Alex learned that very first day? Spider might like the corn knife. But Wolf liked his teeth.
And then they were five.
After breakfast, the Changed crammed the little woman’s drippy remains into those nylon duffels. Then they all moved out. Another few hours on the trail put them in at a rustic, though roomy, hunting cabin. Judging from the condition of the snow, Wolf ’s gang had been back and forth a few times. A quartet of car batteries, connected in a series by wires, nestled on the snowy porch and probably once provided enough juice to run lights. Either the batteries were drained, however, or the Changed didn’t care for or need light. Instead, Acne and Beretta carried in armloads of splits from a tarpaulin-covered woodpile wedged against a dilapidated shed. Soon two columns of gray wood smoke chugged from both a chimney and stove flue. The Changed bunked in the cabin while Alex and the others roomed in the old shed, a drafty place that reeked of ancient engine oil and dead mice. For warmth, they had a squat propane camp heater, and one another, although their ropes were removed, leaving them free to roam around the shed under Acne’s watchful eye.
They’d returned the backpack Jess had given her. Ruby said this was standard: “We always come with something, and whatever we have, we share.” There was something odd about the way Ruby said that, as if it was just assumed that anyone captured would have supplies. That actually didn’t make sense. People could be snatched at random, but Ruth had said always. But Alex’s arm was screaming by then, and she didn’t have the energy to ask any more questions.
She caught some luck. Inside the pack, Jess had squirreled a battered first-aid kit that looked as if it hadn’t seen daylight since the early Mesozoic era. The alcohol swabs were long dry. The gauze packs were still intact, however, and several foils of antiseptic goo were squishy enough that she thought they’d do the trick. No antibiotics to swallow, but maybe she wouldn’t need them. While the others squabbled over energy bars and MREs, she melted snow in an empty can and let the water boil then cool to where she wouldn’t scald herself.
The pain was ferocious, like something with talons and teeth gnawing her flesh to the bone. It was so bad her stomach somersaulted and then rolled on a tidal heave of nausea. She stopped what she was doing to hang her head between her knees. God. Her face and neck were filmed in a fine, greasy sweat. She gulped air, working not to pant. How had Tom not passed out? She was having a hard time with only hot water and gauze. Tom had withstood a superheated knife.
Oh, Tom. Her throat knotted. A wave of shame and grief swept through her. She managed to stopper the moan, but she felt the tears leaking down her cheeks. She thought of how hard she’d struggled to hang onto him: his face, his scent, the way he looked at her. How he made her feel. But I gave up. I should have fought harder, found a way out, but it was easier just to go along.
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew she was being illogical. Someone— something—had gotten to him. Tom was dead, and that was not her fault. She’d done the best she could. So why did she feel this crush of guilt, like she was the one to blame? Tom wouldn’t want that. The one sensible thing Jess had ever said was that Tom’s sacrifice—all he’d done and suffered through to keep her and Ellie alive—shouldn’t be for nothing. Tom would want her to go on with her life, not beat up on herself.
Tom, I’m trying, but what am I fighting for? Staying alive just to stay alive isn’t enough.
She felt a sudden, irrational urge to laugh. God, she was worrying about the meaning of life when she was probably going to wind up minced into sushi.
“Hey.” She looked up to find Sharon, the ex-biker queen, eyeing her. The woman clutched an MRE meal pack in one hand and was busy forking in cheesy noodles. “You all right?” Sharon asked, through a gluey mouthful of half-chewed pasta.
Sharon didn’t sound all that concerned, really. Probably hoping I keel over and then it’s just that much more food for her. That snotyellow goo on Sharon’s chin wasn’t doing wonders for Alex’s stomach either. The others were similarly stuffing their faces, and the listless, vacant looks they turned on her were incurious at best.
“Yeah.” Smearing away the wet with the backs of her hands, she pulled in a tremulous breath. She’d be damned if she cried in front of these people. Not one had offered to help her. No, all they were interested in was filling their bellies. “The shoulder just hurts, that’s all.”
“Hunh. Well, you know the old saying.” Sharon chewed, swallowed, used the heel of one hand to swab her chin.
“Which one?” Sharon seemed to be a font of meaningless homilies, and Alex really wasn’t interested. God, how can they eat after what they’ve seen? Maybe I’ll end up the same way—if I live long enough, that is. It’s like being afraid. How long can horror really last before you just numb out? “No pain, no gain? It’s always darkest before the dawn?”
“Naw.” Sharon sucked her hand clean. “No matter how bad you think things are now?” She forked up another mouthful of wormy noodles. “They can always get worse.”
They stayed put overnight that first Saturday, a delay she later learned was unusual. By twilight, the Changed normally moved on. Privately, Alex suspected that beating the crap out of Spider had something to do with the layover.
On Sunday, at dusk, they all set out again. The dense cloud cover choking the sky that afternoon hadn’t broken, and the night was black as pitch. With no stars, she could only guess at a bearing but thought they were still heading north or northwest.
Another thing: the Changed often used flashlights and lanterns, but only intermittently. While Alex and the others struggled and stumbled, the Changed were shadows, moving with relative ease through the forest. Like panthers, she thought, or wolves. She knew from high school bio that the eyes of nocturnal animals were different, though she couldn’t recall exactly how. This ability begged another question, too: were the Changed done Changing?
All told—going by Ellie’s Mickey Mouse watch—they walked until three Monday morning and managed maybe six miles before putting in at another campsite. No shelter this time around. Acne and Slash lashed them to each other and then a trio of stout oaks before heading out to hunt. Again clad in his wolf skin, Wolf led the pack. Only Spider stayed behind, huddled over a fire, while they burrowed into the snow and waited.
When the Changed returned at first light, they brought fresh faces: a doughy woman and a bluff man shaped like a fireplug who said, later, that his name was Otis. The woman was Claire, but it was Otis who told them her name. Not five minutes after the Changed returned, Wolf went to work with his teeth and then Claire was way past caring about little niceties like an introduction.
On Wednesday, Day 5, she thought she was done. By then, Spider had recovered enough to do the honors. Prowling through their number, she favored Alex with a good long stare. Spider’s hatred was so palpable you didn’t need spideysense to see it. Where the others withered at the slightest eye contact, however, Alex wouldn’t let herself waver. In fact, she rather enjoyed the view. Spider’s face was a mess. No perky little nose now, and all that good orthodontia gone to hell. Spider’s bruises were turning a sickly greenish-black. Her left cheek was so badly swollen that her eye was only a silver slit.
When they cut me loose, go for it. Alex tensed, rehearsing the moves in her mind. Run at her, get in under the knife, and . . .
In the next instant, that nip of resin stung her nose, and she thought, Uh oh. Her eyes inched left, and then her pulse skipped.
Wolf ’s face was a studied blank, though she saw the small muscles of his jaw twitch and that scar dance. The space around and above her head seemed to fizzle and spark. The air took on a scorched stink, like the lingering of ozone after an electrical storm. Spider’s back stiffened as the other Changed’s heads swiveled from her to Wolf and then back again.
Fighting about which one was going to have her, she thought. One way or the other, I’m done. The tang of desperation left her mouth puckery and parched. Having seen what Wolf could do— what he enjoyed—she didn’t see how she could get out of this. It was one thing to head-butt Spider and grab a knife. But those clashing jaws . . .
