Chapter Forty-Three
DO NOT VOMIT, DO NOT vomit, do not vomit.
The deer hangs by its hooves in Sling and Bama’s outhouse, the marbled meat bloody and drying. White layers of fat streak the flesh, swirling like a secret and grotesque pattern.
“How much are Sling and Bama taking?” I ask, plugging my nose.
“They like the glutes,” Greeley answers.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m always serious.”
“That’s hardly true.”
Greeley walks up to the deer and pats its face. The deer’s black eyes stare blankly at the floor. “Rest in peace, Lilah.”
She named it? Of course she named it. The woman knows no bounds. Me, on the other hand? My stomach curdles like milk past its expiration date.
I curl my toes in my shoes, trying to stop my rancid gut from bubbling into my throat.
Greeley turns back to me and adds, “We’re eating the shoulder tonight. Slow-cooked over fire.”
The door opens behind us, and Clara pops her head in.
Her black hair is pulled into a waterfall atop her head, and her coral overalls remind me of a sunset.
She holds a tapered candle in two hands, creamy wax melting onto palms. She doesn’t seem to notice.
Instead, she feasts her eyes on the hanging deer.
“Exceptional kill.” She leans against the doorframe like a cowboy. “How’d you take her down?”
Greeley makes a stabbing motion. “Kota’s and my blades struck Miss Lilah here in the noggin at the exact same moment.”
Clara’s eyes light up. “Whoa. Will you teach me how to hunt sometime?”
“Hell fucking yeah I will, little one.” Greeley walks to Clara and high-fives her.
“I’ll help, too,” I chime in. Greeley raises an eyebrow. “My brother, West, was a Boy Scout. He taught me a lot of knife tricks. I can show you some of them, if you want.”
Smiling, Clara says, “That’d be totally sweet. My teacher—”
“Dinner, my dears!” Bama calls from the house. “Dinner is served!”
Clara groans. “Mom always interrupts me.” She stomps her foot. “I was just getting to the good part!”
“Come on,” I say gently, remembering Bunny’s temper tantrums. I walk toward Clara and rub her shoulder. She juts out her lower lip, pouting, but softens at my touch. “You can tell us all about it over dinner.”
THE TABLE IS SET, TEA lights are aflame, and plates are stacked high with hefty portions of deer meat.
“As I was saying,” Clara starts. She grips her fork in her fist and pierces a hunk of meat. “My teacher taught us how to open pocketknives. She was going to show us how to use them this week, but she died.”
Clara’s voice is matter-of-fact, and her eyes are devoid of emotion. I nearly choke on my mashed potatoes. What do I say to that? I look to Greeley for help, but she just shrugs. Clara rips off a hunk of meat with her teeth and smacks as she chews.
“Close your mouth, honey,” Bama chides. “It’s not ladylike; nobody wants to see the pulverized deer on your tongue.”
Clara sticks out her tongue in response. The sight of half-chewed deer meat is enough to make my stomach churn. I set down my fork.
Sling picks up where Clara left off. “Shame we lost your teacher, Clara. She was a good one.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Apparently,” Sling says, “she went out on a run to get school supplies—never came back. Rumor around town is that a zombie got her. I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I,” Bama adds. “They found her car in the Office Depot parking lot, full of pens. But I tell you what, that woman always took precautions. Always had an extra layer of security.” She bites into a slice of meat. Her face lights up. “Delicious! My, this is delicious!”
“Besides”—Sling shifts his gaze from his meal to Greeley—“you haven’t seen too many zombies around the outskirts for a while now, have you? Seems like both sides of the Split have cleared out the area pretty well.”
“Kota killed one just a few miles out yesterday,” Greeley says.
My cheeks redden.
If Bama feels awkward about our last dinner together, she doesn’t let on. She beams at me and says, “Did you now? Good on you, dear!”
I shove more deer into my mouth. This go-around, I don’t have visions of eating Bunny.
Sling smiles and points his fork at his daughter.
“In any case, I think the Egals are starting to play dirty. I think they’re taking our people.
Hunting them, maybe. And for what? Just because we operate different than them?
That’s the entire reason the Split was formed!
So that we could all live happily without bugging one another.
” Bits of meat fling out of Sling’s mouth and onto the tablecloth.
With the butt of her fork, Greeley hits her plate with a cling. Sling and Bama turn to each other, eyebrows raised. “Damn right, Sling! Damn right! I say we kill them all. I say we—”
I interject before she turns the fork on one of us. Me, specifically. “What are the kids going to do now, then?” I ask. “Now that they don’t have school.”
Please don’t put them to work like in Egal. I want Bunny to have a better life. I need her to.
Bama looks at her daughter with loving eyes. “I was thinking I’d take on the job! We could bring all the kiddos to our place to—”
“I don’t want them coming over here, stealing my guns!”
Plural?
“Sharing is caring—”
“Now I’m calling bullshit on that,” Greeley says. “Sharing is what landed us in this situation in the first place. I stand by Clara. Don’t let those little fuckers steal your shit.”
“Language, dear,” Bama says.
But now Greeley’s riled up. Her entire face is bright red. She pushes herself up from the table, and even though she’s only got a fork in her hand, she could use it to stab every one of us with her eyes closed.
There’s a knock at the front door.
Thank god.
Bama shuffles up from the table and squeals when she sees who the visitor is. “Jasper! My dear!”
“Sorry I’m late,” he mumbles. “I brought wine.”
“Perfect! Just perfect. We saved you some deer!”
Greeley plops back down into her seat and shoves some more meat into her mouth. “Oh, deer,” she says. “Whole gang’s here.”
“Come, come, take a seat, right next to Kota!”
Jasper’s wary eyes land on mine. My skin flushes, and my stomach knots. As I offer him a subtle wave, my back stiffens in my seat. He pulls out the chair, the legs screeching against the wood floor. “Hey,” he whispers.
“Hey,” I whisper back.
“For fuck’s sake, are we five?” Greeley exclaims.
Bama screeches, “Language!”
The rest of the night passes something like that. Banter, laughs, chiding, flinging bits of meat, wine.
Though being near Jasper feels weird, when it’s time to say goodnight, I don’t want to. I don’t want to go home, alone, when I could stay here with this riot of people.
But when Jasper asks if he can walk me home, all I want to do is be alone with him, even if things are tense between us. Yesterday, he didn’t want me enough to ask me to stay at his house—so why does he want my company now?
On the long walk back home. A crescent moon rests high in the sky, sending silvery beams across our rocky path. A burnt-tinged waft of wind floats into my nose.
Burn Day.
The acrid smell of burned humans is unmistakable.
What surprises me isn’t that the smell traveled over the wall; it’s that bodies in Egal are burned once a month.
If the burning took place more often, it would stink up the community.
More than that, it’s too heavy an emotional toll to bear.
But the last Burn Day was right around when I met Jasper, just a couple weeks ago.
Why break protocol? Are there more dead in Egal than usual?
I turn left to Jasper to see if he notices the smell, but he doesn’t so much as scrunch his nose.
His mind is elsewhere. I can tell he wants to say something to me—about the lingering tension between us, I’d guess—because he opens and closes his mouth a grand total of four times.
I half-heartedly kick a pebble the first time Jasper does it.
The second time, I send a fat rock skittering down the street.
Ultimately, he keeps it shut, and neither of us utters a word the rest of the way.
There’s a wall between us, and it’s like we’re on opposite sides of the Split again.
The one thing that binds us? The rancid stench of burning flesh, and he doesn’t even notice it.
When we’ve reached Andrew’s—my—front patio, Jasper asks, “How’s the new place?”
“I love it so much,” I quietly respond.
He picks at a peeling slat with his finger, then pulls off a leaf of overgrown ivy. “Really?”
“Really.”
Jasper crumples the ivy in his hand. “Then I guess I’ll leave you to enjoy it.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Jasper pauses and stares at me. He looks like he wants to hug me goodnight, and I definitely want to hug him, to feel him and be held by him, but he just stands before me in silence. Eventually, he offers me a captain’s salute and leaves.
THAT NIGHT, I CURL INTO Andrew’s dusty, smelly bed, and I cry myself to sleep.
I don’t want to wake up here, alone.
But I do.