Thirty-Two

The wound in his left arm was infected. It throbbed in time with his racing heartbeat. The flesh around the holes was livid and swollen. He’d need antibiotics before long, but at this rate he’d die of starvation first.

Richard’s legs quivered. He was beginning to wonder if he could eat handfuls of grass, or maybe from one of the many clusters of waxy mushrooms he’d encountered. He dropped to his knees and clawed through a layer of decomposing leaves and pine needles, revealed the dark and rich soil beneath, released an aroma that called to mind his uncle’s compost heap, down in Texas, back when he was a boy who’d eaten dirt once or twice, for no other reason than to see what it tasted like.

His fingers slipped into the soil. He pawed and scooped like a dog in search of a long-hidden bone, and eventually he found what he was looking for. Dirt-speckled, the earthworm slid like wriggling sandpaper down his throat. He found another, its accordion-ringed length bulging and fat. It got stuck and split in half as he tugged it from the earth, and the other half flapped back and forth. He pinched it between his fingers and tossed it into his mouth, swallowing it whole.

He took a break, and when he was certain that his stomach would not betray him, he dug and he dug, plucked a thick grub from the dirt and quickly swallowed it. Chew your food, his mom always told him, but he couldn’t—not now. Not yet.

His knees were still weak, but his stomach felt better. Time oozed by. He walked and he walked, stopping once more to fish the meager protein of a handful of worms from the earth. When he pissed, he did so with regret, watching the stream leave his body and patter onto the ground, where it was quickly absorbed. Rainfall had been steady but light, barely a drizzle most of the time, and he could only stand around for so long barely feeling droplets spatter his tongue. He wasn’t taking in as much as he was letting out, and if the sky didn’t open up real good real soon, he was in trouble.

A few minutes before he saw the shed, he knew he’d gotten himself turned around. It was the tree, the fallen one with the branch that looked like a dick. Silly, totally juvenile, the kind of puerile stuff Kimberly gave him a hard time him for, but he’d seen it on the way out of hell, and even though he was in the roughest shape he ever had been, those words—looks like a dick—had nonetheless shot through his head as he stumbled past it.

There it was again, and there was the shed, goddammit all to hell.

The gun seemed promising for a second—it would not take much. He need only bring it to his head and pop, it was all over—he could die twitching on the ground with raindrops on his face and a bellyful of earthworms. But that wasn’t his thing. He messed up, same as anyone, but quitting, giving up, it just wasn’t an option. Kimberly playfully mocked this attitude, called it macho nonsense, but it was probably the one thing they’d actually had in common, aside from a love of each other’s bodies: Kim hadn’t believed in giving up, and though she may have dressed up this determination in a slightly more righteous and noble garment, at the end of the day it was the same damned thing.

He’d save his remaining bullets for the bastards who’d done this to them, if he had the chance. And if he ran out before they were all dead? Fine.

He reached the clearing at the top of the hill, the three buildings. The place where the attack had come. The winding road leading down to the highway.

He stood in the clearing, looking around, brazen. He tried the door leading into one of the apartments, found it unlocked. Stepping in, he turned on the light and shut the door, locked it. The air was stale and meaty.

There were two rooms—a bedroom with a tiny kitchenette and a small bathroom. The bedroom looked like a hundred dorm rooms he’d partied in during his five ill-spent years at college. A bed with rumpled sheets spilling onto the floor. A scattering of beer cans, an uneven stack of skin magazines. He found a .38 Special in one of the bureau drawers, the kind of weapon a woman would keep in her purse. It was fully loaded—five bullets—and it slid neatly into his pocket.

He opened the small fridge, which contained only five cans of beer and a pack of sliced ham. The ham was slimy and smelled bad. He checked the torn label and was not surprised to see that the ham had come from Misty’s.

There was a can of beans in the cabinet, a can-opener on the counter. There was a fork lying in the sink, crusted with the remains of some other meal. He rinsed it off and shoveled beans into his mouth, downing the contents of the can within minutes. He drank water directly from the tap, and when he got tired of that he looked around until he found a plastic cup on the floor next to the bedside table.

The walk downhill was, in its own way, as difficult as had been their initial uphill trek. He was weak and tired, and he resisted the urge to give up and simply tumble downhill. Gravity tugged him along, too hard sometimes, and eventually he reached the truck he and Guy and Daniel had been thrown into, and not far from it, Daniel’s corpse, still bound to the tree.

He looked around. There was no sign of Guy.

Daniel’s corpse lifted it head, stared with lidless eyes at Richard.

“Gah,” it said.

He considered his remaining bullets, but not for long. The highway was within reach, and he was not willing to risk drawing attention to himself.

“Not now,” he said, and left.

Soon after, he reached the ranch-style house, stopping long enough to stare for a few seconds at the van, parked just where they’d left it, and he simply kept going, the gun at his side.

The ground leveled out, the sun sank into the west, and when he reached the highway, he turned left, south, toward town.