Chapter 34
The carriers sit perfectly still in their chairs, chained together, rigged to wake one another up at the slightest misstep.
We carefully set our lanterns down at the edge of the hall, giving us just enough light to see what we’re doing.
Keisha reaches out and takes my hand, gives it a squeeze, and locks eyes with me.
My stomach does a dozen somersaults, but I squeeze back.
We step in front of our assigned carriers, and I grip my machete with both hands.
“Go,” Keisha breathes in the tiniest whisper.
I make my first move immediately, swinging downward and at an angle, cleanly taking my carrier’s head off its shoulders. I don’t stop to check if Keisha’s first stab with her knife was successful. If it wasn’t, she’ll be depending on me to keep going as fast as I can.
The sound of jingle bells is deafening in the echoing hallway, and the thud of the carrier’s head hitting the floor adds to the cacophony.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a carrier to my right twitch.
My heart thuds, and every instinct tells me to focus on the carrier that’s waking up, but I stick to the plan.
I move to the end of the line of carriers and sweep my machete across the neck of my second target.
It takes two swings, but what’s left of the carrier slumps in its seat. Two down, two to go.
My last two carriers are now fully awake, and the one in the middle lets out a grotesque screech that makes me desperate to drop my machete and cover my ears, but just like Keisha promised, their arms are weighed down by the heavy, useless carriers handcuffed to their sides.
They can’t reach for me. I step toward my third target and aim at its throat.
Another screech causes me to flinch as I swing.
I miss and my machete gets lodged in its shoulder bone.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath as I work the blade out of the bone. When it finally springs free, I stumble backward, nearly losing my footing. I take one breath to steady myself, then take another swing. The carrier goes down mid-scream. One more to go on my side.
I glance to my right to see how Keisha is doing.
She’s just finished off her second target and is heading toward her third.
I’m one kill ahead of her, but she’s holding her own.
To my left, the final carrier screams from its chair, but it’s rendered useless.
With both arms pinned down, all it can do is lunge forward, snap its jaws, and scream to be fed.
I’m exhausted, but the last swing is easy work.
One clean swipe of my machete ends its screeching.
I turn toward Keisha just as she’s standing in front of her final target.
Its arms are pinned down too, but somehow it rises out of its chair.
That’s when I notice the size of this thing.
Its arms are the size of legs, and its legs are the size of a torso, and it has to be at least six foot five. How did we miss this?
As it rises, the handcuffs dig into its rotten skin and muscle tissue, peeling flesh from bone.
I can’t help it. I gag. The giant’s focus is locked on Keisha.
That’s when I notice she doesn’t have her knife.
In one hand is the hatchet I gave to her back in Naples; in her other, she’s holding the severed head of one of the carriers I killed.
I watch in horror as she brings the hatchet down on the carrier’s left wrist. How could she have aimed so poorly?
I stare dumbly, trying to imagine what she could possibly be doing.
This wasn’t on the napkin. This wasn’t part of the plan.
The final carrier swings its stump at her as the remaining handcuff strains against the carrier’s wrist, peeling rotting skin from bone. I start to worry that it might not hold. The line of dead carriers drags behind the massive monster in front of us as it reaches for Keisha.
With an eerie calmness, she waves the head in front of the carrier as if she’s actually trying to get its attention. What the hell is she doing?
I grip my machete, ready to come to her rescue. I take the first step, but Keisha’s voice pulls me up short. “Quinn!” There’s a coldness in her eyes I’ve never seen. She swings the head again, and I’m completely unprepared for what comes next.
“Catch,” Keisha shouts. Before I can react, she tosses the severed head across the hall and into my chest. The enormous carrier follows the head, shifting his focus to me. My stomach sinks as its hand, stripped down to the bone, slips through the cuff.
No. No. This isn’t happening.
The carrier barrels across the hallway, and I scramble backward until I’m trapped in the corner.
I don’t have enough room to swing my machete.
I can’t run. I don’t think. I just drop my weapon and dive for its legs, putting my entire weight into knocking it off its feet.
It’s like running headfirst into a tree.
I fall backward onto a broken chair, and something scrapes across my left calf, sending a sharp pain shooting up my leg.
Not like this. I can’t die like this.
He reaches for me as I try to stand, pinning me against the wall, forcing my chin to the sky with his rotting stump.
Anything but this.
The air is pressed from my lungs, but I can’t feel it. I only feel the burn of betrayal deep in my gut. Everything slows, and the last seconds of my life stretch out in front of me. I was expecting her to try to leave me behind in St. Louis. I was not expecting this.
Rage fills me, and I use it. I tuck my knee up and leverage every muscle in my left leg to push the carrier away, creating just enough space to breathe.
I gasp for air and reach down to my belt for my knife.
The one I took off Grady’s body. A scream rips from my throat as I reach high on my tiptoes to shove the knife into the carrier’s eye socket, barely out of reach of his snapping jaws.
I’m breathless as he falls at my feet. Then Keisha’s wide eyes meet mine. She may be smart. She may have crafted a near perfect plan, but she wasn’t counting on this.
She’s as much of a liability as Ginger and January ever were; I just couldn’t see it. Until now.
I stalk forward, leaning down to sweep my machete from the floor where I left it. She puts her hands up and walks backward. She begs for forgiveness. She tells me it was an accident. She tells me I need her. She tells me she loves me. Her words are just noise though. I barely hear them. I’m numb.
Her back hits the wall. A perfect tear slides down her face. Whether it’s real or manufactured, I’ll never know. I know better than to ask. I’ll never get an honest answer, and besides, if I hesitate now, I’ll lose my nerve.
“Quinn, I’m sorry. I was just so scared.” There it is. There’s the truth.
“I guess you were right to be.”
I go for her heart. Aiming the sharp tip of my machete just below her clavicle, I press it as deep as I can and hold her there, caught on the tip of my blade.
She coughs. A tiny drop of blood drips down her chin and a sob shakes her shoulders. I look deep into her eyes and wait for her to take her last breath.
“I really did love you, Keisha.”
“You shouldn’t have,” she whispers.
When she finally slumps to the floor, I pull my blade from her chest and my vision blurs.
I scrub my eyes, and I’m surprised when my hands come away wet.
Tears. They feel completely foreign on my cheeks.
I step away from the scene until my back hits the wall, and I let myself slide down to the floor.
I shake and breathe in and out over and over again, letting the adrenaline drain from my body.
It takes several minutes, but soon, my head clears and my breathing evens out.
I look down and see a small pool of blood collecting under my boot.
I lift up the cuff of my pant leg over my calf to reveal a nasty cut.
I barely remember how it happened. I pull a T-shirt out of my backpack, tear it into strips, and bandage the wound.
It’s good enough. Besides, it’s time to get what we came for.
I step over the bodies, toward the door they were there to protect, and swing it open. It’s full of everything we hoped for. I know I should feel relief or joy or excitement, but I don’t feel much of anything.
Mechanically, I pull boxes of dried goods and cans off the seemingly endless shelves. I stuff the supplies into bags and carry them back and forth to the boat until it’s so full that I don’t have to think about the empty space in the seat across from mine.
In the boat, I grip the oars. It’s time to go now.
I take another deep breath and row, pouring every ounce of anger and grief into each pull.
There was only one thing anchoring me to the way things used to be, and now she’s gone.
With each row, the weight of my sadness is transformed into the lightness of possibility.