even followed us,” said Casey, looking through the back window. “Why wouldn’t he follow us?”
Jenny wanted a cigarette. Bad. Not because she had to have the nicotine, but just for the comfort of it. “I don’t know, Casey. Maybe he thinks he’s crazy. He killed all those people in the Underground.”
“Yeah, but they killed you.”
“Not all of them,” she said. “Some of them were sweet.”
“Jen, I saw how he was looking at you. I don’t think he was going to hurt you.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I have to assume he was. I’m not human to him any more.”
“If that’s true,” said Casey, “then why didn’t he kill you?”
“I thought you hated him,” Jenny said. There was no fire in her words, no anger. No emotion.
“I thought I did, too,” said Casey. “I don’t know anymore. That was...intense.”
Jenny didn’t reply. There was nothing else to say.
There were rotters clogging the street. Jenny honked the horn, but they just kept shambling down the road. She turned the sputtering car onto a side street and weaved around potholes. There was a shape up ahead and she squinted at it. Something was moving near a larger object. Her vision started to go red before she smelled the blood.
“What the fuck is that?” she said.
“Don’t stop,” said Casey.
“Why not?”
“I could barely handle being around your boyfriend, Jen. I don’t think I can handle this. I’m so hungry. Please. Just go back to the museum.”
Jenny slowed as they approached. A lone rotter was hunched over eating something, her front covered in blood. Scraggly gray hair cut short jutted out at odd angles, the dirty nightgown the dead woman wore in tatters. And then Jenny saw what the large object was.
A woman was fixed to a telephone pole, her arms raised above her. Her abdomen was covered in blood as was her hair, which hung in ropes. Jenny stopped the car.
“Oh no, Jen. Please,” said Casey.
“Stay here,” said Jenny. She got out and walked toward the rotter. The smell of the blood was intoxicating. The hunger was growing stronger, filling her up. She took slow steps toward the woman on the pole. The rotter grunted as she passed. She was eating something red and slimy. The woman was still alive, Jenny could sense it. Thin red rivulets ran from her wrists and down her arms. She had been suspended by what looked like an old railroad spike. The meat around the spike looked like raw hamburger and flies buzzed around the wound. There were more flies settling on her abdomen. It looked like she had been torn open. How was she still alive? Her intestines spilled out of her like snakes. Jenny looked down and saw she had been staked at the ankles too, her feet sticking out at odd angles.
She had been crucified, just like Frank Bierce and a dozen other rotters Jenny had seen. But she was alive. Alive and crucified. This wasn’t a Thumper statement. This was something else entirely. Something dark. Darker than rotters on poles, darker than Jenny’s need for Living flesh. This was an atrocity. But even worse was that Jenny was so hungry. She reached out to the girl’s bloody midsection. She just wanted a taste. Just one taste and she would leave. The woman gave a pained sigh and Jenny pulled her hand back. The woman raised her bloodied and bruised face slowly like every movement was agony. Jenny could hear her bones scraping against the iron nails in her wrists and ankles. She saw Jenny and she smiled a watery smile.
“I knew you’d come for me, Jenny,” she said. “I knew you’d come.”
“Lily?” Jenny nearly fell back but caught herself.
“He didn’t look like a monster,” said Lily. “You were right. Sometimes they look just like you and me.”
“Jesus, Lily,” said Jenny. “I’m going to get you down.” She looked up at the spike holding Lily’s wrists. She grabbed onto the head of the nail and tried to pull it out of the wood, but it was sunk deep into the pole. Lily gasped every time Jenny brushed against her, and Jenny ached with everything inside of her with hunger. But this was Lily. She wasn’t going to touch Lily. She’d kill herself first.
“You can’t,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “He was too strong.”
“I can save you,” said Jenny. “Hang on, I’ll go get my brother.”
“No,” she said, her voice louder. She flinched and tried to swallow. She looked at Jenny and tried to smile, but it turned to a grimace on her pretty face. There were dirty track marks on Lily’s cheeks where she had cried. “I’m going to die.”
“I can save you,” said Jenny. “I can take care of you, Lily. Just like I said I would.”
She shook her head gingerly. “I’m ready to go. I’m going to go to Heaven and all my suffering will be over. It’s not going to hurt there. There will be no Joshua or Cora, and there won’t be rotters or...or him.”
“Him?” said Jenny.
“He looks like a man, but he’s not,” she said. “He was going to help me. He said he could. But he cut me instead. Over and over. He sliced me away until I stopped screaming. I couldn’t scream any more. I prayed, though. I prayed hard. He didn’t like that, so he stuck me with a needle. I went to sleep and woke up here.”
“Oh my God,” said Jenny.
“I don’t think he was a person, Jenny,” she said, her eyes sad and haunted. “I think he was the Devil.”
Jenny felt something bump against her and turned to see the rotter coming back for more. She took out her knife and in one smooth movement lopped its head off. The body fell with a dull thud. Jenny turned back to Lily. She was smiling sadly again.
“You were always so strong, Jenny. I always knew you were strong. I listened, you know. What you told me.”
“What did I tell you?” said Jenny. It was hard to look at Lily. She was barely older than a child, and even now she was so beautiful. Jenny covered her mouth so Lily wouldn’t see the horror on her face. The hunger was growing. The smell of blood and Lily’s insides were tantalizingly close. Jenny didn’t know how long she could stand it.
“You told me to run,” she said.
“Lily...”
“I did it, Jenny. I ran. I was so brave.”
“I did this to you,” Jenny whispered. “It’s my fault.” Lily could have been killed quickly with a bullet in the Underground along with all the others, but Jenny had told her to run. The girl had suffered unimaginable pain all because of her.
Lily’s face turned to a mask as her features began to relax. “They took my baby,” she breathed. “That rotter you killed. She ate it. How can God let this happen? Why has He left us?” Her eyes found Jenny’s. “But now I think maybe He didn’t leave us.”
“He didn’t?” Jenny said weakly.
“Maybe He sent you to save us all.” Lily’s body shuddered and her eyes rolled up into her head until they looked completely white. And then she was gone. The hunger started receding, but Jenny stood there for a long time, staring at Lily’s angelic face. Jenny reached up and closed the girl’s eyes with her fingers, ashamed she had almost done something unforgivable. If it hadn’t been Lily, she probably would have bitten her. Jenny looked up. She couldn’t let her turn. Not Lily. She took out her knife and placed the point on Lily’s pale, delicate throat. It was the only part of her not caked with blood. She shoved the knife upwards with a wet tearing noise. Lily would never suffer again if Jenny had anything to do with it. She wouldn’t come back as a rotter.
She pulled the knife out of her friend and wiped the shockingly red blade on the dead rotter’s nightgown. She put the blade back in its sheath and raised her face to the sky. Puffy white clouds glided over the sun. Lily was the only being in this world Jenny thought was truly good. She had been a child. Her father had been murdered, she’d been raped, abused, impregnated, and just when she thought she had escaped all the horror, this freakshow had stuck her with knives and needles and left her to be eaten alive. Jenny closed her eyes.
And then she started to scream.