DAYLIGHT PEEKED OVER the treetops and dipped its tentative toe into the landscape’s rocky clefts. Iman jerked awake as the first rays grazed her cheek. Her lower back bulged and throbbed like a kinked hose. She stretched, tugging three sharp cracks from her cramped vertebrae and flooding her leg with pins-and-needles numbness from the thigh down. Brian’s head slipped from the crook between her shoulder and breast. He woke with a snort and a tremble, hands raised defensively to his face before settling groggily on his chest. The two of them blinked at their surroundings, gradually recalling where they were and why. Iman’s hand rested on the pistol as they shrugged their way out of the nest of itchy tartan blankets and spare clothes they’d pilfered from the camp site.
Despite the anguished cries and sporadic gunfire that had continued long into the night, they’d each managed to doze for a while, and had even had frantic, urgent sex on the bare earth, breath mingling between locked mouths as they fumbled at one another’s half-clothed bodies. Now it was morning and the fighting had long ceased, and Iman felt anxiety seep back into the crevices of her mind that relief and exhaustion had previously sealed tight.
She sat up and experimented with the gun until she figured out how to remove the magazine. Only one bullet was missing. Tucking the gun into her waistband, she stood and walked toward the trees.
“Where are you going?” Brian asked.
“Back to the camp.”
“Why? There’s nothing there but a bunch of dead bodies.”
“Exactly.”
The forest was easier to navigate in the daylight, its undergrowth less oppressive, its curtains of shadow pulled aside. They found the campsite after only fifteen minutes of looking, drawn as much by smell as by sight. Iman hiked up the collar of her shirt and used it as a makeshift filter. A few embers still smouldered in the fire pit’s ashen belly. The predawn chill suppressed the worst of the odour, but the first shoots of foetid stink had already begun to sprout up, nourished by the morning dew. Keeping the other corpses on the periphery of her vision, Iman approached Motes and knelt down beside him. His skin had taken on a greyish pallor, and his chin looked smudgy with stubble. He lay face-up on the ground, his eyes closed, his face oddly neutral, almost placid. A small dark hole dotted his chest. In the dim light it could have been a splash of red wine clumsily spilt. Iman smoothed a lock of hair from his forehead, alarmed at the cold marble cast of his skin.
“I killed him,” Iman said.
Brian put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Hey, not fair.”
“I did, though. I killed him.”
“I think you did exactly what he wanted you to do. He was just afraid to ask.”
Iman sniffed. She ran a finger beneath her eyelid, the skin there red and puffy. “What do you mean?”
“I saw him attack those other guys. He was so fast you could hardly keep track of him. But when he came at you . . . I dunno. It was like he was moving in slow motion.”
Iman stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth and bit down, stopping just short of pain. “He looks peaceful.”
Brian’s hand caressed her neck. “He’s just Motes again, right? That’s got to count for something.”
“I guess.”
A twig snapped beyond the underbrush. Iman whirled, pointing her gun in the direction of the sound. Her finger tightened around the trigger.
“Don’t shoot, please,” said David. He stepped into the clearing with arms raised. Heavy bags hung from his eyes and lines of exhaustion crisscrossed his face, but he looked otherwise unhurt. He looked from Iman and Brian to Motes. His smile sagged. “Shit.”
“He’s at rest now,” Brian said, tugging awkwardly at his shirtsleeve. “That’s what they say, right? When someone dies?”
“Yeah. It’ll have to do.”
The three of them stood over the body. A cool wind stirred the branches of the surrounding trees. Gusts of crisp, clean air whisked away the smells of corruption, though a lingering odour remained.
“Do we bury him?” Brian asked.
David clucked his tongue. “We don’t have a shovel. Even if we did, you’d never get six feet down up here. We’re standing on solid limestone.”
“Then . . . we carry him? I’m guessing you guys have a car?”
“It’s hours away by foot, and my ribs are shot to hell. I’m not so sure I could do it.”
“Well, we can’t just leave him,” Iman said.
“No,” David agreed. “Not here. Come on.”
With a groan, David locked his elbows beneath Motes’ armpits and lifted the professor. Brian and Iman each took a leg, and the three of them carried him out of the clearing.
They found a quiet spot beneath the shade of a spruce tree, far from the bloodshed of the riverbanks. There they washed Motes’ face and hands with water from a canteen, raising days’ worth of dirt in a brownish foam. David went back to the campsite and returned with supplies. Iman trimmed Motes’ nails with the scissors of a Swiss Army knife—halfway through, she realised with a shudder that it may well have belonged to the scrawny kid who’d burned alive in the camp fire—and scraped away most of his chin stubble with the blade. David laid down the cleanest blanket he could find and used it to bind Motes in a shroud. They positioned him in the crook of the tree’s raised roots, his tranquil face peeking out between the folds of his chrysalis. After a moment’s consideration, David worked the silver alligator ring from his finger and placed it gently in the hollow of Motes’ neck. It glinted like a gem in the morning sun.
“What now?” Brian asked.
“First thing, I’m going home, taking a shower, and sleeping for about a month. Beyond that, who knows?”
“It sounds like a good plan to me,” said Iman.
The walk back to the car took most of the morning, during which none of them spoke. Iman and Brian walked hand in hand, casting occasional glances at one another. The few remaining finches and sparrows dotted the stillness with their song, sparse melodies played atop the lazy rhythm of their footsteps.