THE SUN IS UP AND so are the people eating from the Post’s burned remains by the time I gather myself enough to climb down from the tree. I can’t see them, but I can hear their scraggled breaths, feel their hot eyes on my shoulders and neck as I walk by Loss’s body. Small flurries of snow fall all around me to dust over the dirty ice on the ground.
Everyone in the area must have known about Loss using the cave, so going back there would be dumb. The thought of Luokai still lying there drugged sinks like a rock in my stomach, nothing between him and scavengers who will take everything down to his shoelaces. The gore growls the thought away.
I can’t take Luokai with me. It was like with Dad. I didn’t want to leave him with no sure way to get food even after everything that happened, but I’ve got to focus on keeping my own guts inside me. I don’t want to be dead.
Maybe Luokai was really like Loss anyway. Like Tian and Cas. He infected me. He followed me. Took care of me, but only because he had to. He wanted the cure, and I was the way he was going to get it.
All the people who matter are dead. Dad. Mom. Now Cai Ayi and the rest of the Post. My throat closes over the next ones on the list: Lihua, Peishan.
Howl.
Sev.
My whole new family. The thought grits in my teeth as I run. It was the three of us against everyone else, and three stones against a whole bag just isn’t enough.
I stumble toward the river, not sure where I’m supposed to go now. Step one: Find shelter. Step two: food. I’ve got to live through this so I can…
So I can what?
I stop, looking up into snow as it falls from the clouds, the image of Loss in my head a bloody mess. Sometimes it’s between you and someone else… and no one really wants to be the one that stops breathing. The gore’s voice huffs to finish the sentence the way Tian used to before sending me out for supplies.
Just use your elbows if they get close. Those Sephs’d kill us if they knew we were here. They’d take our tent, our food, our pots and pans. Might even eat that old Pa of yours if they’s hungry enough. She used to get down on the ground, try to look level into my eyes, but I’d always keep them to myself. Looking straight into anyone’s eyes makes them think they know you. Lets them see things they shouldn’t, so they can use the secrets inside you like strings on a puppet, moving your arms and legs even if you don’t want to go. If it gets bad, use the knife. They won’t expect it from you. You’re so little, with the face like a spring flower. Somehow people forget that little folk get just as hungry as the big ones.
I sink down, my arms clasped around my knees as I try to keep my breaths steady, keep myself moored here on this side of the circle where I belong. Snowflakes thunder down from the sky like an avalanche, ready to bury me alive. I wasn’t supposed to stay dead forever. I wasn’t supposed to sink Underneath with SS still inside me. Sev and Howl had the cure. They were going to bring it to me. Fix me. Be with me forever.
But they are gone, and I am here. There’s not a single breath of wind in all this snow.
That wind isn’t your mom taking care of you, June. It’s just wind. The thoughts press hard on me until I can’t think, can’t feel anything but the gore inside me tearing me to ribbons.
That day in the river, Dad showing me how to tie a float, I still remember the way his eyes glazed over. I started away before he even came at me, knowing it was time to run.
It’s just that he was much faster. And I left him, dead under that dirty Menghu’s gun. Dead like Loss, even though they’re supposed to be different. How are they different? How are they different from the world chasing after me because I’m the last one left to kill?
Not even the gore has anything to say to that.
The white around me swirls and twirls until I can’t even see the frozen falls I know lie ahead, the rocks, the river or anything else, just snow all around me. And then there’s a crack.
Ice? I didn’t think I was that close to the river. The night was so cold last night, and now with snow heaping on top of everything—
The world tips out from under me as the ice I didn’t know I was standing on breaks. One last gasp of air is all I’ve got before the water closes over my head, swallowing me like it’s been trying to do for all these years. The cold is like a whip against every inch of my skin, my lungs demanding a breath of surprise.
Should I even try to fight anymore? Maybe this is where I’ve always belonged. Underneath the water.
But then I remember that I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, and I don’t want to be a thing lurking Underneath. Water presses hard against every inch of me, clawing through my hair and pressing at my lips, trying to force them apart. I kick my feet, tear at my bootlaces through the frantic, watery haze of blur and blue and dark and raw cold. I manage to pull them off just as a familiar shouting starts, the voice so much louder than my gore: KICK, it says, taking hold of my arms and legs. KICK AIR SWIM.
But the water presses down, down, down, in on my ears and eyes, almost like a pair of hands holding me under. Like Dad’s hands, his brain so afraid I was going to drown that SS couldn’t remember if that’s what he wanted or what he was trying to stop. I kicked and hit, bit his hands as he held me down, water foaming all around me, the rocks tearing long cuts into my arms as I thrashed.
Ice seems to freeze me over as I kick hard against the current, toward the hole of light I made in the ice above. It’s so close, so close. KICK KICK AIR.
Lungs burning, eyes burning, every bit of me burning even though I’m so, so cold. My fingers find the edge of the hole, and I pull myself up toward it. But the ice cracks, the sharp pieces pressing into the joints of my fingers until it crumbles to nothing, the river current dragging me down once again.
My last breath of air gushes out in a frozen wasteland of bubbles, and the darkness reaches out to pull me down. I can almost see Dad down there waiting for me. It makes me feel warm. Down here, there’s no food to worry about, no sleep to lose, no gores speaking poison in my mind, just the end. So I let the water take me.