Chapter 37
Remy
Eight Months Ago
Just before dawn, Ripley and I left the S.
S. Barbarabelle to prowl the forests to the west of the river.
Out here, it was quiet. Most of the towering trees were evergreen, insulating us from the outside world between the bare skeletons of aspen and paper birch.
Snow hadn’t yet blanketed the ground, but frost lingered in the mornings, making my steps crunch underfoot.
Our days usually began this way, with us out hunting to feed the many mouths that lived aboard the boat. It was early November, which meant winter and harsh temperatures – and the deluge of snow that went along with it – were likely any time now.
But we also left to hunt because Ripley was bored and restless cooped up on the floating hotel.
By my best guess, she was at least ten years old, over three-hundred-pounds, and presumably an African lioness.
She’d likely been born into captivity, since I’d found her chained to a truck outside Las Vegas.
Even with that, Ripley wasn’t domesticated in a traditional sense, not like a dog or even a housecat. We’d been together long enough that we had a bond and an understanding, but sometimes she’d run off into the woods, and I wouldn’t see her for hours.
Most days, though, she spent our time on land sleeping in the sun puddles she found between the trees. If I was being honest, I spent more time walking around the forest than she did.
Maybe I was the one that was restless.
Lately, I’d been travelling farther away, so that kept us gone even longer. That wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity. On the land near where the boat was anchored, we had our gardens, stables, and barns. All of that commotion from people and livestock had started scaring away the prey.
The past couple weeks, I had mainly been getting grouse and ptarmigans. Game birds weren’t bad, and I was happy to be bringing back much needed protein, but it would be nice to get something fattier and juicier than woodsy poultry.
That’s why I was excited when Ripley gave chase so early in the day. I barely caught sight of a young doe weaving through the trees with the lioness hot on her trail. The deer must’ve seen me, too, because she abruptly doubled back, narrowly avoiding a swat of Ripley’s powerful paw.
The doe was running back toward the river, and I bolted to the left, hoping to be able to get ahead of her so Ripley would chase her right to me.
When I could hear them crashing behind me – the lion wasn’t nearly as silent running through the underbrush as the swift moving deer – I knew my plan had worked.
Quickly, I crouched down in a thicket of spruce, and I settled into the shot with my bow. Then I saw the flash of movement.
For one clear moment, the world narrowed in around me. I loosed the arrow, watching it slice through the air as it flew toward my mark.
I hurried out to check my kill, branches grabbing at my clothes, and I wondered dimly why Ripley wasn’t here. She had been right on the deer’s tail, so she should’ve reached her by the time the doe had fallen.
And then I found her. I could see the body, with the arrow jutting out of it, but I couldn’t make sense of it. The world seemed to tilt as I stumbled into a clearing.
There, lying motionless on the frosted ground, instead of my intended prey, was a child. A blossom of red blood darkened the front of her wool sweater.
“Oh, fuck,” I whispered in a panicked breath, and as I staggered toward her, I realized that I knew this child.
She was Clementine Dumont, the seven-year-old daughter of the Barbarabelle’s nurse, Mika. I never spent much time with the children, outside of my niece Fae, and really, I didn’t spend much time with most of the residents of the boat, outside my family.
But Clementine was the kind of child that was impossible to ignore. Bold, curious, adventurous, fearless, and outgoing. She sought me out every time she saw me because she loved Ripley. Even when the lioness wasn’t with me, Clementine would still run over and ask me about her.
And now she was lying in the dirt, her dark hair tangled with pine needles, her eyes wide toward the clear blue sky. The arrow was center of her chest, run straight clean through her. Blood was seeping from her mouth, and a gargled sound came from her throat.
“No, Clem, no!” I collapsed on the ground beside her as she sputtered, and I watched as the light left her eyes. “Clementine!”
I grabbed her, pulling her onto my lap, even though I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help her. She couldn’t be helped, and I knew it, deep down in the sick heavy feeling in my stomach, I knew I couldn’t do anything, but I didn’t want her to be alone.
I think I screamed, but I couldn’t say for sure. I only knew that I was holding her, squeezing her to me hard enough that the arrow I’d killed her with pierced my own flesh. The blood on my hands was slowly cooling and drying, and my face was slick with tears and sweat.
My stomach rolled, and I realized I was going to throw up, and that I couldn’t do that on Clementine. I had already done enough.
I lay her gently on the pine needles, and I raced a few meters away, back through the trees to the creek I had passed.
It was only a few inches deep, but it was more than enough.
The water was ice cold, nearly freezing, and I collapsed into it, my knees scraping against the sharp stones, but I barely even noticed.
I vomited on the banks of the creek. I splashed the water on my face, and it was so cold, I could hardly breathe. So I splashed myself again, because I didn’t deserve to breathe.
I couldn’t keep breathing. I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep living when everything around me was just death and death and death and death and death….
Ripley was suddenly beside me, rubbing her big head against my back.
“This is too much,” I cried. She nuzzled up against me, and I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her thick fur. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Ripley suddenly pulled away from me, lifting her head high with her ears alert. Distantly, over the sound of the babbling brook, I could hear death groans and the crunch of branches.
But I didn’t care. I didn’t care if zombies came out here and devoured me. Maybe that’s what I deserved.
I stared down at the blood staining my jeans, and I remembered the way it felt when Max’s jeans slipped past my fingertips. I felt the rough fabric scrape on my fingers as he fell out that window, and I never touched him again.
My skin was red and wrinkled, and Clementine’s warm blood washed away. My hands were numb, and I wished that all of me would be numb. That the cold water would take me away.
A scream suddenly tore through the trees, raw and high pitched. It was the desperate cry of a little girl, and the zombies sounded far too close to her.
Ripley ran through the trees, running toward the sounds, and I hurried to get to my feet. I’d been kneeling in the cold water so long that they’d gone numb and prickly, and I stumbled forward, tripping over myself and scraping my palms on rocks and pine needles.
I got up again, and I ran as fast as I could, unmindful of the branches cracking into me.
And then I lurched forward, back into the clearing where I’d left Clementine’s body, but it wasn’t only her now. Zombies had crowded around her, tearing into her flesh and devouring her while she was still warm.
Ripley had arrived before me, and she’d already taken some of them out. I’d left my bow and quiver behind before I’d gone to the creek, but I always had a dagger sheathed on my hip when I went hunting. I pulled it out and ran towards the zombies eviscerating Clementine.
I dispatched them in a blur of blood and gelatinous bones and primal screams I couldn’t contain.
Then it was over, none of the bodies moving anymore.
Ripley’s face was stained green with blood, and so was I, but the rage and despair remained.
Nothing changed, except my lungs burned and my muscles ached and my mouth tasted like copper.
Then I heard a little girl crying above me, and for a delirious moment, I worried I’d lost my mind. I looked up, and in a nearby pine tree, I caught a glimpse of orange between the evergreen branches.
A meter or two off the ground was Juniper Cruz, the young daughter of Oakley and Sienna. She was wearing an orange jumper, her dark hair hanging in two braids, and she clung to the branches with terrified ferocity.
“Juniper!” I yelled up at her as friendly as I could, and I held my hands out toward her. “Are you okay, sweetheart? Can you get down from there?”
“They ate Clemmy!” Juniper yelled, tears streaming down her tawny cheeks, ruddy from fear and crying.
“I know, and I am so sorry, honey, but you gotta get down,” I said, pleading with her really. “I want to get you back to your mom and dad. All the zombies are gone, and I’ll take you back home.”
For a horrifying few moments, she didn’t respond or climb down. She clung to the tree, sobbing, and I wasn’t at all sure what I should do. I just wanted her to be safe, and far away from this.
“If I jump, can you catch me?” Juniper asked.
And because I was afraid any other answer would leave her stuck in that tree, I said, “Yes!”
With a frightened squeal, she leapt, and I held my arms open to her. I caught her, but I fell back to the ground, and she knocked the air painfully from my lungs.
Once I could breathe, I sat up and looked her over, making sure that she was okay. Or at least as okay as she could be. Scrapes and bruises from the tree, and whatever lasting trauma happened from witnessing her childhood friend eviscerated by zombies.
I couldn’t leave Clementine here, and I didn’t want Juniper to see her this way.
No one needed to see her this way. I took off my flannel shirt, stripping down to a tank top, and I wrapped Juniper up in my clothing, hiding as much of her as I could.
I had killed the zombies quickly, but already, there was so little of her left. Even her feet had bite marks on them.
I carried her in my arms, and Juniper walked between Ripley and me as we headed back toward where the Barbarabelle was anchored in the Staulo River.
We hadn’t gone very far when we heard them calling for the children. Clementine’s mother Mika and Juniper’s mother Sienna, and others, many others, yelling for them.
I knew I should shout and say, I found them. But I couldn’t bring myself to say something that would allow Mika to feel a moment of relief, because it would feel like a betrayal, it would cut deeper than any lie. Her daughter was dead in my arms, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise.
So we walked, and it wasn’t that far. They were searching the woods that ran beyond the gardens and the grazing meadow for the livestock. I could see them running toward me, and all I wanted to do was sink back into the cool darkness of the woods.
But I couldn’t.
From the moment I saw them, it was a blur. Mika and Sienna running towards me. Juniper broke away from me, racing toward her mother. And then Mika saw the body in my arms, she saw my shirt stained red with blood, and she saw her daughter’s legs with chunks of flesh missing.
Mika screamed and collapsed, and all I wanted to do was die. I wished I was anywhere, anywhere at all, not in that moment. Not there. Not feeling the body cooling in my arms. Not hearing her mother scream like her heart had been ripped from her. Not here. Not alive. Nothing.