Through the snow, across the clearing, the Changed were feasting. The party was just getting started. She had no idea where they’d taken Daniel, but she saw what they’d done to Jack.
Against the jump of orange flames, the spit turned like something out of a grade-B movie: the carcass threaded onto forked wood lashed together with, of all things, extension cords. The stench of scorched rubber competed with the aroma of broiled meat and crisped fat.
Spider was right there, in the thick of it, cheeks bulging, her skin ruddy with firelight and excitement. She was pressing a fistful of something to Leopard’s mouth—
And Alex felt the edge of his teeth ghosting over her own fingers.
God. An icy knife of horror cut her chest. No. She watched as Leopard pulled Spider closer—
And it was her skin that crawled as Leopard’s tongue dragged over Spider’s neck.
Oh my God. It was happening again, her mind slewing sideways, stepping away—and into Spider.
No! A surge of bile roared from her mouth to splatter to the snow. She isn’t me; I’m not her. I’m not one of them, I’m not!
“Hey!” Sharon called. “Get your ass back here!”
God, what’s happening to me? Alex’s muscles were shuddery and weak. Sagging against the door, she pressed her sweaty face to icy wood. I’m not Spider. I’m Alex and I’m here, I’m here, I’m right here.
But then she thought she heard just the faintest whisper sighing up from a deep, dark crevice of her mind. Or maybe she didn’t really hear anything, and it was a hallucination conjured from her addled, sick brain. Whatever. It was there, sardonic and small.
Maybe, it—the monster—said. But so am I. So am I.
43
“You did good.” Sharon vacuumed in a mouthful of trail mix and chomped. With the other hand, she plucked at a red and black flannel shirt they’d draped over Ruby. The little woman had swum to a kind of twilight awareness long enough for Alex to feed her an erythromycin and Percocet before sinking back. Alex had worried about the dose because Ruby was so small, but knocking her out seemed both prudent and humane. Time enough to deal with the night’s horrors tomorrow.
“I would never have thought to use the frying pan.” Sharon smoothed the shirt under Ruby’s chin. “That was real smart, Alex.”
“Yeah. Well.” Alex palmed a pink tablet of erythromycin. After bandaging Ruby up and then taking care of her shoulder, she’d sifted through the pill bottles, debating which was best, and decided upon erythromycin, a drug she was familiar with from her work with Kincaid. The pills had belonged to a Bev Ulrich, who had been a very bad patient, only taking four tablets when her doctor specifically prescribed two a day for fourteen days, or else. Or maybe Bev had been a very good patient, only the Zap happened and then bronchitis was the least of her problems.
The label said to drink plenty of water and take the medicine on a full stomach. Yeah, right. She could hear Aunt Hannah: Not bloody likely.
What am I going to do? The thought of her aunt made the tiny black letters on the prescription label squiggle and shimmer. Erythromycin sure wouldn’t cure what ailed her, but she dryswallowed the antibiotic, which caught and hung in her throat. It’s winning, Aunt Hannah. After all this, the monster’s finally going to win.
“Hey.” Sharon fished out a bottled water and twisted off the cap. “Better chase that you want it to go down.”
“Thanks.” She tipped the bottle to her mouth, wincing a little at the taste. The water smelled of blood and iron and dead Jack—
“You okay?” Sharon asked around peanuts.
“Sure.” The smell of soggy nuts and sickly sweet raisins was turning her stomach. “It’s just . . .” She gave a hard swallow and felt the antibiotic knuckle its way down her chest. “How can you eat after what happened?”
She expected an explosion, but Sharon only swallowed, shrugged, said, “Me starving isn’t going to help that little boy. He’s dead, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m not dead and neither are you. Now get some food in your stomach. You look like shit.”
“What do you care if I eat?” Alex gave her a sidelong glance. “If I don’t, it’s just that much more for you, right?”
“That’s true, but you’re smarter. If I get hurt, you know what to do. I’m hedging my bets. So here.” Sharon tossed her an MRE. “Eat that before I force it down your gullet like my grandpa did his geese.”
“Geese?”
“Yeah.” Sharon snorted. “He thought he was going to get rich making that Frenchie food, outta liver?”
“Pâté.”
“That’s it. He had this big metal tube.” Sharon’s hands bracketed a good foot of air. “About yay long. I had to hold the goose’s head while he shoveled in the grain. Maybe two pounds of feed, four times a day? Poor things, they would struggle and choke . . . used to make me cry. That old man never did get rich neither. He was so impatient he ended up with more geese with busted guts than ones he could carve the livers out of. Near about went broke on that scheme, and good riddance to bad rubbish. But I got in plenty of practice with force-feeding. I don’t think you want to find out just how much.”
That, Alex thought, was about as close to an apology as she would ever get from Sharon. Alex’s eyes skimmed the label of the MRE: spaghetti with meat sauce. Just the thought of wormy noodles swimming in red sauce made her stomach lurch. But she forced her trembling fingers to work open the box and pouches. The MRE came with a heater pack, but when she tried adding water, she slopped it onto her jeans.
“Whoa, whoa, hang on. Let me do it.” Deftly plucking the MRE and heater pack from Alex, Sharon added water, then slid the MRE into its heater pouch. “You worried about that boy, Daniel? Think they’re carving him up, too?”
A bald way to put it, but this was Sharon. “I doubt it. They always make us watch, like they did with . . .” She paused. “I just don’t understand why they haven’t put him here with us. What could they want with him?”
“How about information? You heard the boy: ambushing those bastards was his idea. So maybe they think they’ll get more out of him. If I was them, that’s what I’d do. Except”—Sharon’s face puckered in a frown—“I don’t know how. They aren’t exactly the talkative types, you know what I’m saying?”