Thirty-Three

They helped Sally out of bed, out of her clothes and onto the floor, where she got down onto a padded vinyl mat and lay on her side. When the time came, she’d get on her hands and knees. She refused drugs, though Mathilda offered, and when Colleen asked about her position, Sally informed her between contractions that she’d delivered her first two children that way, and that she’d do the same now.

Mathilda launched into a spiel about natural childbirth and the disadvantages of lying on one’s back, never mind the fact that the position was the preferred choice of most doctors. She spoke with the surety of someone who knew exactly what she was talking about and wanted to make sure you knew it, and Colleen could not help but think of Kimberly. She sounded like that when she went from simply talking to educating, to opening your eyes, if she could, to the truth.

Feeling useless, Colleen stood looking down at the two women, Sally on her side, wearing only a bra, her massive stomach smooth and somehow beautiful, her back arched and her ass pointing at Mathilda, who knelt behind her, hands resting upon her thighs.

“Hey,” Sally said, looking up at Colleen and smiling. She nodded toward the floor. “Come on.”

Colleen sat beside the pregnant woman, tried to smile, could barely hold the woman’s gaze.

“We’re going to make it,” Sally said, and Colleen could only stare at her. She reached out and took Sally’s right hand.

“Does it hurt?” It was a stupid question, but Sally did not seem to care.

“Yeah,” she said. “But it’s the good kind.”

“Oh.”

Behind Sally, Mathilda said something about dilation. The child was not crowning yet, but would be soon. The window between contractions was drawing shut. In the living room, one of the children wept.

“Dammit,” Mathilda said. “Poor kids.”

“What should we do?” Colleen asked.”

“Can’t do anything,” Mathilda said. “They have to wait.”

“To hell with that,” Sally said then grunted, teeth clenched. “Get out of here. See to them.”

“I may need her here,” Mathilda said.

“Bullshit,” Sally snapped. “Need her for what? Go.”

Colleen looked up at Mathilda, eyebrows raised. Mathilda shrugged.

“Go on.”

“I’ll be back,” Colleen said, bending over and kissing Sally on the cheek. “I’m going to calm them down and—”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

She did.

The unnamed child was asleep where they’d left him, on the floor, lying on his back and supported on either side by pillows taken from one of the beds. Little Huff sat at the base of the bookcase, an oversized book containing photographs of Northern California opened before him. He’d torn out several pages.

The twin leaned against the door leading into the nursery, wailing. Above his head, the doorknob rattled. Thankfully, the deadbolt was well out of his reach.

“Hey,” she said, sliding down the wall and sitting beside him.

“I want Jack,” he said, answering the question on Colleen’s lips.

“I know, Davy,” she said, unsure if that was one of his nicknames. She patted her thigh. “Come here. I want to hold you.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s sick, baby.”

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“I think maybe he just needs his rest, kiddo.”

“He needs a nap?” The kid asked. His face was still red, his eyes wide and watery. His bottom lip quivered, and he threw himself into her arms, unleashed another round of tears.

“Aw,” she said, rocking him, her own lip quivering, her own tears flowing. She held back a scream, as much for her own sake as that of the child clinging to her chest. To their right, the doorknob turned and turned. “Come on, honey.”

She took him back to the couch, sat him down. He looked up at her, and she wondered if maybe he was cried out for now. In the bedroom, Sally gasped and growled and cursed, and Colleen stood looking down at David.

“I have a job for you, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, sounding confused.

“You want to be a big boy, right?”

“Yeah,” David said, smiling. He lifted his right arm and curled his small fist toward his shoulder. “I got muscles.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, realizing with horror that the boy would bounce back a lot quicker than any of them. He was too young to have any expectations of the world. He’d never known normal, not as she and her friends had defined it, and he never would. “Strong muscles.”

“Yeah!” He flexed both arms now. She raised a finger.

“Now listen.”

“Okay.” He lowered his arms, folded his hands on his lap.

“I need to do something,” she said, and David watched her, eyes wide. His face was no longer red. His pale eyebrows no longer stood out. “I need you to watch the babies, and stay right here, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t follow me.”

“Kay.”

“Okay,” she said, bending over and kissing him on the cheek.

In the hall, she slid back the deadbolt on the nursery door, watched the knob as it rattled and turned. She wondered how long Lissa’s corpse would stand there on the other side of the door, going through the same motions, trying and trying and trying to turn the knob, trying to get out.

Colleen seized the knob and, turning it, pushed into the nursery. The dead girl tumbled backward, tripped over the other dead child, which had yet to get to its feet, and landed butt-first on the floor.

“Urk,” it said, looked up at Colleen, heavy-lidded and slack-jawed, its legs across the dead twin’s back. Colleen closed the door behind her, moving quickly. Stepping around Lissa’s corpse, getting behind it, she slid a hand beneath the dead girl’s armpits, picked it up, and quickly moved to one of the cribs, where she sat it down facing the wall.

The dead twin had managed to crawl less than a foot since last she saw it. Its little bloody hands tugged at the carpet. It tried and failed to lift its head. Though its fat arms were an unhealthy shade of light gray, its tight blond curls still looked the picture of health. They bounced as the dead child’s head rose and fell, rose and fell, quivering.

It peeled away from the bloody carpet with a wet thwack. She lay it in the crib beside the dead girl, careful to not look at its face. Lissa was bad enough—the sight of the boy’s face might provide that final bit of pressure: the twig would snap, and she’d be done.

At the diaper-changing table, she scrubbed her hands with wet wipes, dropping them to the floor when she was done with them. She hadn’t gotten much blood on her fingers, but she wiped and she wiped as if her hands had been doused, stopping at last once she’d gone through nearly half the box of wipes.

The dead twin’s fingernails made little zipping noises on the surface of the small vinyl mattress within the crib. Colleen moved fast, gathering toys into her arms and dropping them into the other crib. She gathered more toys, more still, and topped them off with diapers and other items from the changing table—creams, wipes, and powder; handfuls of clothes from the chest of drawers.

The dead girl stood, wobbling, her hands gripping the plastic-covered rail running along the tops of the bars. There was a single red blossom on her blouse, just beneath her left collarbone, where the knife had gone clean through. She pressed her stomach to the bar, and Colleen winced. The crib would not hold her. Soon, gravity would do its job.

The twin struggled, a wind-up toy incapable of winding down, and the dead girl watched as Colleen opened the door, wedged it open, and pulled the other crib from the nursery and into the hall. Its wheels whispered across the carpet, and when she entered the living room, Little Huff still sat tearing pages from books. David held the unnamed child in an awkward sprawl. The infant stared into space, tugged at its spit-slick bottom lip. David looked at the crib brimming with toys, and his eyes lit up.

“Mr. Timmy,” he said, beaming, and Colleen had no idea who Mr. Timmy was, or how the kid had bounced back so quickly. There was a thud from the nursery, a wet gasp, and Colleen realized that David’s recovery was temporary. He’d remember what he’d witnessed—tonight, tomorrow night, and every night for the rest of his life, short as it may be.

“Be right back,” Colleen said, and returned to the nursery.

The dead girl lay on her back staring up at the ceiling, her lips red with blood, her cheeks stippled. The red droplets were cartoonishly bright against the pale skin of her face. The child turned its head toward Colleen and tried to sit up. Colleen considered throwing it into the crib again, but figured there was little point in that.

Tossing one of the colored blocks into the crib holding the struggling dead twin, she left the nursery, locked the door. David had set the infant aside and now reached through the bars of the crib, reaching for a plush blue caterpillar with a head of frilly pink yarn and stick-on eyes that wobbled when you moved its elongated body. Colleen retrieved the toy and handed it to the boy.

“Mr. Timmy,” he said with something like adoration.

“You did a good job,” Colleen said. In the back, Sally gasped.

“Colleen?” Mathilda said.

“Coming. One sec.”

She placed the clothes, diapers, and changing supplies on the kitchen counter, gathered all but a few of the toys to her chest and dumped them unto the floor. She placed Little Huff into the empty crib, and he immediately set upon the toys. The unnamed boy had fallen asleep upon the floor.

“Keep an eye on them,” she said to David, who sat on the couch engaged in a hushed conversation with Mr. Timmy the stuffed caterpillar. “David?”

He looked up at her, mouth open.

“Keep an eye on them, okay?”

“Okay.”

In the bedroom, Sally was on her hands and knees, inhaling and exhaling in deep, measured gasps. Blood pattered to the mat between her legs and pooled in the indentations beneath her knees. Mathilda knelt behind Sally, her hands hovering beneath the pregnant woman’s vagina. She looked like a quarterback waiting for the snap.

Colleen didn’t know where to look, suddenly felt as if she were intruding on the woman’s privacy somehow, violating her dignity. Her face grew hot.

“Blow, blow,” Mathilda said, placing a reassuring hand on Sally large left buttock. Mathilda shot a glance at Colleen. “They okay?”

“For now, yeah.”

“Good. Get down here,” Mathilda said. “Up front.”

Sally’s eyes were closed, her face a tight red knot. Beads of sweat were scattered across her forehead. Colleen knelt before her, placed a hand atop one of the woman’s hands, which were planted upon the floor, fingers splayed.

Sally’s eyes popped open, and the look in her eyes was nearly feral. Her lips drew away from her teeth, and Colleen pulled her hand away, gasped, but what she mistook for anger was actually pain, intense, unimaginable pain. Sally squeezed shut her eyes again, and her face darkened, red washing to purple.

“Okay,” Mathilda said. “It’s coming.”

“Nnnnggggh,” Sally said, quivering, regaining composure and resuming her practiced breathing exercises. She opened her eyes, looked at Colleen, and now there was only recognition and gratitude in her eyes.

“Hey,” Sally said.

“Hey.”

“We’re doing it,” she said. Colleen wasn’t entirely sure what the woman meant, but she nodded nonetheless.

The moment of serenity passed, as if it hadn’t existed at all. Sally’s face bunched up again. “Push,” Mathilda said, and Sally’s face darkened still, hundreds of small blood vessels bursting into a scattering of purple freckles across her cheeks and forehead. Sally screamed and gasped and hissed, and Mathilda told her she was doing great, one more push, one more push. The pools of blood around Sally’s knees were deeper, and the baby slipped into the world. Colleen caught a glimpse of the child’s head, bluish and bloodied and covered in meaty chunks of something, and she wondered why it was so silent—wasn’t Mathilda supposed to lift it up by its tiny feet and slap its ass, make it cry? Where was the hot water—didn’t they always need that in the movies?

Sally gasped and eased herself to the floor, onto her side once again, taking one of Colleen’s hands in both of hers.

Mathilda worked, clamping off the umbilical cord, which looked silvery-blue and oddly beautiful. She snipped it, and a bright red jet of blood spattered her face.

“Come on, come on, come, on,” she said, springing to her feet and taking the child to the place she’d prepared atop the dresser. Colleen had not noticed it until now.

The seconds dragged out, and she watched Mathilda’s hunched shoulders, aware that Sally’s eyes were on her. There was a sucking sound, followed by a moist gasp that bubbled into a quivering, puppy-like mewl. The mewl became a cry, a healthy, hearty cry, and she laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She looked down at Sally, and they cried.

Mathilda stepped toward them, the crying child wrapped tightly in a blanket, a knit cap covering its small head. Its face a tight red knot, it looked a lot like its mother.

“Say hi to your daughter,” Mathilda said.

 

 

 

Less than an hour later, Sally lay in bed, resting easy, her child in her arms, her gun and her copy of Lolita within reach. She was drugged, but only enough to kill the pain—she’d torn during delivery and had required stitches. Mathilda sat on the couch, shirtless, the unnamed child pressed to her breast. David sat next to her, staring into space, one bright blue wooden block clutched in his hand. Little Huff sat in the crib sucking on a teething ring.

It was a little after six. Less than two hours before dark.

“This can wait until morning,” Mathilda said with very little conviction.

“Maybe it can,” Colleen said, looking at the woman and shaking her head. “But I can’t. We need guns. We need ammunition.”

“He might be dead.”

“Yeah. Maybe so. We can hope.”

She’d gone into the bedroom, searched the pockets of both Max and his father. There’d been a small keyring in Max’s pocket, but the three keys on it matched three keys on Huff’s larger ring, which contained eleven keys. She’d pocketed the small ring, just in case, and held the larger ring in her left hand. In her right she clutched Huff’s pistol.

Three shots. She had three shots, if she ran into Samson on the way to the house. Three shots, and if those went wild and she was still alive, there was Huff’s knife, the one that she had used to slice his head from his shoulders. It was sheathed, strapped to her right ankle, atop her jeans, where it hung loosely.

“Okay?” Mathilda asked.

“Yeah,” Colleen said, nodding. Her stomach curled into something sharp and wounded. Her hands shook. She walked to the kitchen, chased a shot of whisky with another shot of whisky. The shots went down like fire, and Colleen wondered where Samson kept his pot. Something, anything, to make the next step easier; something to kill the edge.

You don’t need that stuff, she could hear her mom saying, the dead woman’s words an amalgam of countless past lectures. She could see Daniel now, rolling his eyes, and the hurt on their mother’s face. It’ll just turn you into an idiot. You just need God and the strength He gives you.

Colleen closed her eyes. “Help me,” she said, not entirely sure who she was talking to. “Please.”

Before leaving, she piled a third shot of whisky atop the other two. She needed all the help she could get.

 

 

 

The fourth key she tried opened the lock on the lone door leading into the courtyard. She pushed it open, saw only trees and a path where part of her expected to see walking corpses. There was the whisper of the breeze through the trees, the occasional chirp of a bird, the snap of a twig, but little else. She walked downhill, eyes darting from shadow to darkening shadow, tree to tree, but soon she realized that Samson could be anywhere, just anywhere at all, and she was wasting her time, jumping at every shadow and shape. If he were out here he’d come, and she’d face him, whatever the outcome.

She moved downhill with ease, branches snapping beneath her feet, and soon she came to place where the ground leveled out before the three small buildings, the place of the attack. The truck was gone, and though she tried for a minute to resist the urge, she could not stop herself from searching the ground. There was no sign of Guy’s severed penis. If one of their attackers had not taken it, the elements had. She froze, and it all came raging up like vomit, threatened to kick her legs out from under her and leave her crying and screaming in the dirt.

“No,” she said. There would be time to panic and cry later, time to mourn, time to scream herself to sleep, if that’s what she needed to do. But not now.

She tried the door leading into the cabin on the right. It was locked. The door leading into the middle cabin was not. Raising the pistol, drawing back the hammer, she turned the knob and stepped into the small apartment.

She moved quickly, finding nothing save tattered pornographic magazines beside the bed, moldy smelling towels in the bathroom cabinets, and an empty bean can on the counter beside the small kitchen sink. The cold cuts in the fridge had come from Misty’s, and had long since gone bad.

Outside, she scanned her surroundings. Between the trees there were only trees. Between those, trees, and so on. The sky was gray with the threat of rain, and she could not get a handle on which way was which. She moved downhill, and though she repeatedly thought of herself as moving south, that was probably not the case. It wasn’t long before she spotted the truck, somewhere far along a winding trail that moved to her right, away from the main road in whichever direction.

She reached the truck, the same truck they’d thrown Guy against. There was nothing in the glove compartment, and the rifle rack in the back window was empty. The keys were in the ignition. She touched them, considered it for a second, shot it down. They may need the truck later, and she needed to move in silence.

She eased the driver side door closed, turned around.

“God,” she said. She was not praying.

Guy stumbled toward her, head low. His face was a marbled bluish-grey, his hands bound behind his back and trailing a single length of rope. A smaller length of rope trailed his left foot. He wore no pants, no underwear. There was a dark round hole where his penis had been. He wore socks and shoes. His upper legs were the same bluish-grey as his face. His ankles were dark and swollen and covered in seeping black blood-blisters.

“No,” she said. “Jesus, no.”

Her lover’s corpse lifted its head, and its sunken and faded eyes widened. It opened its mouth, closed it. It picked up its pace, nearly stumbling.

She raised her gun, got Guy’s face in her sights, weeping as the distance between them closed.

“Guy?” She asked, though she knew there was no point, that she was doing exactly what the news had urged everyone to not do. This was not Guy.

It opened its mouth again, and its shoulders jerked left and right, left and right with its struggles to be free of its bindings, the space between them closing, closing…

Tears blurred her vision, and she brought her left hand to her face, squeezed her eyes shut. Sobs rocked her body, and when she opened her eyes her dead boyfriend’s face was inches from hers and moving in, mouth open, lips drawn back in a snarl that suggested neither anger nor hunger. There was nothing there—nothing in its face, nothing in its eyes.

Gasping, she took a step back, pressed the barrel of her gun to its forehead and pushed, hard. The dead thing stumbled away from her, opened its mouth again, moaning in silence.

She lowered the gun, looked at it. Her hands shook.

Three bullets.

“I’m sorry, hon,” she said, pocketing her gun and stepping around and behind Guy’s corpse. It tried to spin in place, followed her movements, tottering, nearly stumbling once more. “I just can’t do it. Not now.”

Seizing the long rope that hung from its wrists, she walked to the nearest tree, gently tugging Guy’s walking remains toward her. The dead thing’s head swung from side to side, and it took a single shaky step backward.

“Come on.” Another tug, more forceful this time, and the thing seemed to listen. It took a second step backward, a third, and Colleen wound the rope around the trunk of a young but sturdy pine, tied it off, three times for good measure. As she finished the final knot, Guy’s corpse moved in, leaning forward, mouth open and eager, the same nothing look on its face.

“I’ll come back,” she said, looking into its oddly sunken eyes, wondering what—if anything—remained of Guy. Was there a soul in there somewhere? Had there ever been? “I promise I won’t let you stay like this.”

A few minutes later, she found another living corpse. It had been scalped. Its nose was gone, as were its lips and ears. Its grinning face was a cracked mask of dried blood.

It was naked, bound upright to a tree, its skin mottled and jaundiced, deeply bruised where the rope had worn into the flesh. Its feet were black and swollen. There was a massive oval-shaped wound on its chest, and its throat had been torn out. It looked at her, leaning forward and opening its mouth, snapping like a weak and dying animal.

“Daniel,” she said, and her dead brother stared at her. She saw him as he’d been just a few days ago, sitting on the couch and smoking a joint, flipping the hair out of his face, always flipping the fucking hair out of his face.

She raised the gun and shot him between the eyes, and that was it. He was just a dead kid tied to a tree now.

“Come on!” she roared, and the forest spun around her. “Come out, you mother fucker. Come on!”

No one came. Down the trail, Guy’s corpse turned toward her. She walked back to the main road, head low. Her dead boyfriend’s head turned to follow her.