“You said you understood what it takes to survive,” Calvin says to Margie. “How hard it is to find somewhere safe.” He’s sweating, his lips pale. “You’ve got Sally to take care of like I have my brothers.”
Margie just stares at him. He knows what she’s done for her sister. What she would do if their situations were reversed. Behind them, Slick Head’s chokes become high-pitched wheezes.
Margie winces, and Calvin’s finger jumps on the trigger before slipping away. “Cut him down,” Calvin orders Sally without taking his eyes off Margie.
“You have to understand this.” He speaks like he needs Margie’s absolution.
Sh
e feels the perfect roundness of the barrel of the shotgun pressed hard enough against her skin to leave an indentation. One flick of his finger and she’s done worrying. Done planning and patrolling and constantly fighting against the incessant fear.
She’s failed Sally. She always knew that she would. In the same way her father failed her and she failed her mother. In the world with the dead, her failure was always inevitable.
Slick Head’s gags become desperate—wet, smacking sounds that fill the cabin as streaks of blood tear along his neck from his nails scratching for air.
Sally’s breathing hard and fast as she steps toward Slick Head, his face puffy, with busted blood vessels in his eyes turning them red. She draws the hand holding the knife over her shoulder as if preparing to hack at the rope. He claws at her, trying to get his fingers around the blade, but she just swings her arm hard, knuckles cracking against his jaw but the hilt of the knife keeping her fist solid like a brick.
Blood dribbles from his mouth and she pulls back to strike again as the hanging man chokes on broken teeth.
Beard roars and leaps for her, but he’s too late. She’s already sliced the knife across Slick Hair’s throat, a ragged gurgling gash of frothing blood that drips from his neck as his mouth gapes open and closed, open and closed.
Sally spins toward Beard, holding the bloody blade between them, but that doesn’t stop him. He crashes into her, dragging her to the ground. His fingers rake at her, claw at her face, and pummel her throat.
She tries to hold him off but she’s a young girl and he’s a massive man—it’s like a fawn beating back a bear, and Beard howls and spits with his rage as blood from his brother’s neck twines down his arms and drips to the floor.
Margie’s eyes flare and she drags her broken body across the room to her sister’s defense, not caring that the barrel of the shotgun traces her movement. “Stop it!” she screams, reaching for her sister’s tiny hands, trying to drag her away from the mauling monster.
Beard roars up, rising tall on his knees as he swipes at Margie, hand slapping at her busted shoulder, which causes a surge of pain bright and intense to shatter across her mind, shutting her down.
Sally pulls into a ball, pressing her face against Margie’s side, trying to protect them both. Beard huffs, his mouth foaming as he stares at them huddled under his brother’s mangled body.
He holds out his hand. “Give me the gun,” he demands of Calvin, but Calvin doesn’t move. He stares at the two girls. Two broken bodies that moments before had been whole.
He did this. He helped break the world.
Beard spins toward him, his fingers clawed in a fervent fury. “Shoot them, Calvin. Stop acting like any of this means something and just do it!”
Margie’s senses clear bit by bit and she watches as something clicks in Calvin’s eyes. He aims the shotgun at her, and she takes a deep breath, waiting for him to pull the trigger. She always thought she’d be relieved in that moment but instead she feels the most intense regret.
She’s spent too much time scared. She should have gone to West Virginia with Sally. She shouldn’t have locked them in a cabin she knew would one day fail to protect them.
She thinks of all the notebooks filled with her sister’s handwriting. The trips had always been a lie.
Calvin stares at Margie. “You care about me?”
She doesn’t answer, just clenches her jaw as her cheeks burn with her own stupidity for trusting a stranger.
He steps closer to her, urgent. “Would you kill me for her?” He says it like they’re the only two people in the room. As if one brother isn’t dead and the other asking for her and her sister’s murder.
Margie doesn’t have to think before answering. “Yes.”
Calvin pulls the trigger. Outside a few birds scream and scatter into the trees.
“They wouldn’t have,” Calvin finally chokes out. “I’ve never meant enough to them. Ever.” Smoke twines around him, pungent and sweet. “Jeremy was wrong. It should mean something. Killing someone—I need it to still mean something. Or else everything in the world falls apart.”
Next to Margie, Sally rolls to her hands and knees and beats at Beard’s shot-shredded chest, blood splattering her fists and arms, caking her hair. It’s not enough she’s given up the world because of the dead, but to have been asked to give up this place, and the dreams it held, because of the living is too much.
Margie stares at Calvin. He pushes the gun into her hands, guiding the barrel until it’s wedged into the hollow of his collarbone. She doesn’t understand how everything’s changed again. How one minute she was death and then she was life and now she holds death in her hands again.