At first, Sara did not understand what she was being told. Her body reacted before her mind could. There was a shaking sensation that traveled from her heart and out to her limbs. The words “left her in the woods” echoed alongside it.
Chained to a post? Left to scorch in a metal box? None of these scenarios seemed beneath a woman who would suffocate a young man to death.
“Try to sleep.” Sara pressed her lips to Joy’s head. “I’m going to get some air.”
Joy let out a heavy breath.
Sara walked through the bunkhouse. There were two doors; one at the front, one at the rear. She opened the back door. No stairs, just a four-foot drop. She jumped down to the ground. Her spattered sneakers disappeared into the thick prairie grass. She lifted her toga and walked into the forest.
Birds chirped. Sara looked around. No guards in deer stands. No young men with rifles, knives, pistols. The steady hum of the generator told her that the greenhouse was to the right. Sara went to the left.
Her nose picked up on the unmistakable odor of rotting meat.
The body of Michelle Spivey was about thirty yards behind the bunkhouse. She was lying on her left side, snarled in an overgrowth of brambles. Her spine was curved. Her left knee was bent. Her right leg jutted out behind her. She looked as if someone had tossed her into the woods. Thrown her out as if she was trash. Her right arm was draped over her head, hand clawing at the air. She was fixed in place, the muscles slowly depleting of oxygen as rigor mortis paralyzed her body. First in the eyelids, then the jaw and neck. Given her age and muscle mass, along with the extremely high temperature, Michelle had likely been dead anywhere from two to four hours.
Sara looked back toward the bunkhouse.
The door had closed. No one was coming. No one had even noticed that she was gone.
Running was an option, but Sara was not going to run right now. Michelle Spivey had been broken by the time the car accident brought Sara into her world. The woman had barely spoken more than a few sentences. She had stabbed a man to death. She had served as Dash’s compliant accomplice. But she had also been a mother, a wife, a doctor, a human being. This was a time for some sort of meditation, a kind word that acknowledged Michelle’s life.
Sara was not going to do that, either.
She got down on her knees. She grabbed the collar of Michelle’s dress and ripped open the back. The woman’s ribs protruded like whalebone. Red welts had rubbed into the thin layer of skin covering her vertebrae. She had been carved into with a knife, punched repeatedly in the kidneys. The yellowing bruises indicated that at least a week had passed since she had been beaten. The wounds had scabbed. The burns were more recent.
Sara knew what a cigarette burn looked like.
She ripped the dress the rest of the way down. Michelle’s underwear was stained. She had started to leak. The intense heat was boiling the fat from her skin and oiling the ground beneath her.
The entire left side of Michelle’s body was such a dark, reddish purple that she looked as if she had been dipped halfway into a vat of ink. When the heart stops beating, blood always settles to the lowest point. Livor mortis was the Latin phrase used to describe the color of the skin as heavy blood cells sank through the serum. The process sped up with heat. The stain that went down Michelle’s hip and leg, up to the arm that she’d laid her head on, indicated that the woman had died exactly where she’d been lying in the woods.
Tossed here like trash.
Michelle was bloated from the bacteria swirling inside of her body. The heat hadn’t done the worst of the damage. Gwen had lied about giving Michelle antibiotics. Or maybe the antibiotics hadn’t worked. Either way, Gwen was responsible. Sara knew exactly who had left Michelle to die out here.
Her passing would have been agonizing. Falling in and out of consciousness, disoriented, perhaps hallucinating, burning with fever. Sepsis had swollen her abdomen so much that the skin had cracked. Alongside the fissures, Sara could make out the faint stretch marks where twelve years ago, Michelle’s belly had expanded to accommodate the baby she was carrying inside her womb.
Ashley.
Sara remembered the child’s name from the newspaper article.
She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. The heat drilled open her pores. Sara tried to feel something, anything, but found herself numbed by the relentless brutality. There was no way for Sara to accurately gauge how long it had taken Michelle to die out here. The place seemed to have been chosen to maximize her suffering. Far from the Camp. Tossed onto the thorns of a bramble bush. Beaten and battered. Pain literally slicing open her body.
Behind Sara, the bunkhouse door banged open.
She ducked down her head. Sara was hidden by the overgrowth, but she didn’t know for how long. She worked quickly, examining Michelle as closely as she could, checking for chemical discolorations or some indication of what the scientist was doing inside the greenhouse. She smelled her hair. Looked at her fingernails. Rigor had sealed shut her jaw, but Sara checked inside her gums, her nose and ears.
“Dr. Earnshaw?” Dash had cupped his hands to his eyes. The sunlight narrowed his field of vision. “Are you back here?”
Sara dug into the pockets of Michelle’s dress, slipped her fingers around her bra, the band of her underwear. She was about to give up when she noticed the positioning of Michelle’s left hand. The fingers were folded in, but the thumb was straight out in a hitchhiker’s pose.
Death grips were extremely rare. They came when a chemical reaction inside the body was triggered by abject terror. Michelle had been given ample time to contemplate her death. She had placed her hand under her bent knee, forcing the fingers to stay closed, of her own volition.
There was something written on her palm.
“Dr. Earnshaw?” Dash was turning his head slowly, scrutinizing the forest in sections.
Sara leaned over Michelle’s body to get a better look at her hand. Vomit slid up her throat. The smell of rotting tissue was noxious. Sara held her breath. Up close, she thought maybe Michelle had written two words, or one really long one. Black marker. Only the bottom edges of the letters were exposed. Michelle’s fingers covered the rest.
“Where are you, Dr. Earnshaw?” Dash’s voice was calm, but she did not trust it to stay that way.
Sara picked at Michelle’s fingers, trying to pry them open. She was sweating too much. The fingers were too swollen. Sara couldn’t find purchase. Her only option was to break the rigor mortis in the wrist. The muscles had hardened like plastic. Sara gripped Michelle’s fist and forearm and twisted each of her hands in opposite directions.
She was rewarded with a loud snap.
“Lance?” Dash had heard the noise. “Hey, brother. Do you mind coming out here with me?”
Sara clawed at Michelle’s fingers. The nails folded back, but they would not budge. She tried pressing upward with her thumbs.
Dash jumped down from the bunkhouse door. A second set of feet hit the ground. Thirty yards away. Tall grass. Thick trees. He was talking to Lance. Sara was too panicked to understand him. Her heart was pounding. Her eyes felt shaky. She had to get Michelle’s hand open. She had to read the words. She looked around for a stick or something that she could use to force them up. There was nothing.
Sara would have to use her mouth.
She bit at Michelle’s clenched fingers, trying not to break open the skin.
“Dr. Earnshaw?” Dash called. Lance coughed. They were getting closer.
Sara caught the ball of Michelle’s first knuckle between her front teeth.
She pulled back.
Snap.
Middle finger.
Snap.
Ring finger.
Snap.
“Dr. Earnshaw?”
Dash was standing several feet behind her. His voice sounded nasal. He had pinched together his nostrils to ward off the stench. Lance was behind him. He belched once, then vomited against a tree.
Dash’s crushed nose turned his sigh into a honk. He said her name again, “Dr. Earnshaw?”
“She’s dead.” Sara had already folded herself over Michelle’s body. She forced out a cry, feigning grief. “You let her die. She was all alone.”
Dash told her, “I’m sorry you’re upset. She was a flawed woman, but she redeemed herself in the end.”
Sara tried to close Michelle’s hand. The fingers would no longer hold their shape.
He said, “Let’s not drag this out, okay? The smell is terrible and I—I said you could stay in the bunkhouse. Let’s take you back now. It’s cool in there and you can—”
Sara got to her feet.
“Doctor—” Dash called, but Sara was already jogging through the overgrowth toward the bunkhouse. She pulled herself up through the door. Gwen was standing inside. She looked anxious but she was always anxious.
Sara walked directly to the medicine cabinet. She found the rubbing alcohol. She stuffed a folded bed sheet under her arm and walked toward the front door.