3. Meat and Mercy
CHAPTER THREE
meat and mercy
The sun doesn't rise. The world just turns a lighter shade of grey. Hunger wakes me. It’s not a rumble; it’s a claw twisting in my gut—a demand.
My body is eating itself. Clara is asleep, but it’s a fever sleep—restless, sweaty, her brow furrowed.
I check her leg. The purple is spreading.
We need food. Fuel. I check my pockets. A pocketknife—dull steel, heavy.
A roll of electrical tape I grabbed from the bus kit.
"I'll be back," I whisper to her unconscious form.
I step out into the white. The cold is instantaneous.
It seizes my lungs, freezing the moisture in my nose.
The snow is thigh-deep. I trudge toward the treeline.
The silence is profound. No birds. No wind.
Just the sound of my own heart hammering against my ribs.
I find tracks near a frozen stream. Small.
Desperate. A rabbit. I’m not a hunter. I’m a hockey player.
But violence is a universal language. I wait.
I crouch in the snow until my legs go numb, until I am just another rock, just another stump.
I let the cold seep into me until I am part of the landscape.
Movement. White on white.
The rabbit hops out from beneath a pine bough. It pauses, nose twitching. It looks at me, but doesn't run. It stares with black glass beads, as if it knows. As if it’s offering itself. A sacrifice.
I lunge. My hand closes around warm fur.
It screams—a high, human sound that makes my skin crawl.
It kicks, frantic, life struggling against the end.
I don't hesitate. I snap its neck. The scream cuts off with a wet crunch.
The warmth of the body fades instantly in my hand.
Death is cold. I stand, holding the limp weight.
I don't feel triumphant. I feel… heavy. I feel the weight of the theft.
"Sorry," I whisper into the grey air. "But I need it more." I carry it back to the shack like an offering. Inside, Clara is awake. She watches me skin the animal with the dull blade. Blood stains the snow I brought in, a vivid, shocking red. The smell is metallic, raw.
"Is that..." she starts, then stops, swallowing hard. She looks green.
"It's protein," I say flatly. "Don't ask."
I cook it over the fire. It’s barely seared, pink in the middle, but we eat it.
We tear at the meat with our teeth, grease coating our lips.
It touches my tongue—hot, gamey, bloody.
It tastes like iron and pine needles. It tastes like life.
I watch Clara force herself to swallow, tears leaking from her eyes.
When we finish, I sit back, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
I feel a savage kind of satisfaction. We are still here.
"Your hand," Clara says.
I look down. The cut from the bus window has reopened. Blood is dripping steadily onto the floorboards, pooling in the dust. I hadn't even felt it.
"It's fine."
"It's deep, Rowan. It needs stitches. If it gets infected..." She trails off, looking at her own leg. She knows the math. She reaches into her pocket—the one on her inner coat. She pulls out a small sewing kit. A needle. Thread. Black thread.
"Why do you have that?"
"Wardrobe malfunctions," she says, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. "I fix things. That's my job. I fix the boys' suits before pressers."
She gestures for my hand. I hesitate. The idea of her touching me—touching the damage—feels wrong.
Intimate. I am the one who wraps his own hands.
I am the one who deals with the pain. But I give her my hand.
She threads the needle. Her hands are shaking, tremors running from her shoulders to her fingertips.
But when she touches my skin, they steady.
She cleans the wound with melted snow. The water is freezing.
"This will hurt," she whispers. "I don't have... I can't numb it."
"Do it."
The needle pierces the skin. I don't flinch. I watch. The steel slides through the tough calluses of my palm, drags the thread through the red meat of my hand. It hurts. God, it hurts. A sharp, stinging fire that travels up my arm. But it’s a clear pain.
It focuses the world. It pushes the cold away.
She pulls the thread tight. I watch her face.
She’s biting her lip, focused, her eyes narrowed.
She looks fierce. Not a PR manager, but a surgeon.
She pushes the needle through again. And again.
In. Out. Binding me back together. The pain becomes a rhythm—a heartbeat.
She ties the knot and bites the thread. She looks up. Her eyes meet mine. They are gold and wide and terrified, but there is something else there, too. Pride. She’s holding my hand in hers, blood smearing between our palms—a blood pact.
"There," she breathes.
"Good job, Doc."
She laughs, a shaky exhale that sounds like a sob. "Shut up."
For a second, the shack feels warm. Then the wind hits the door again, screaming and reminding us that we are just meat, waiting to be consumed. Keep something alive, I think, looking at the stitches. I flex my hand. The pain is sharp, binding. It is a tether. I am still here.