For a long, suspended moment after the second blow fell, the whole house seemed engulfed in a cavernous silence. It was as though Emilia’s ax had cleaved not just through the skull and spinal column of the creature who’d come for them but all the way to the bottom of the world. As though she’d smashed open Pandora’s box, but what had spilled out wasn’t monsters or bad dreams—those were already loose, had hounded the living since the beginning of living—but the end of dreams entirely. Now everyone left on Earth was free, for the first time, to float forever in a terrible but peaceful hereness.
To Rebecca, it almost seemed her skin had lost its porousness, become not membrane but lid, sealing whatever constituted her inside. She could drift here above the wood floor of the Stockade, among windows and walls, occasionally bump the drifting, lidded bodies of her fellow survivors, as though they were all moored boats in a marina. But she could never again get topside, call out to her companions. Certainly not invite anyone else aboard, or leave.
Then Jess, of all people, burst out screaming. Scrambling out from the side of the creature’s sprawling corpse—like a foal squirming free of its mother, Rebecca thought, then gagged—Jess lurched away, kicking. One foot caught Rebecca in the cheek and knocked her head back, and the other plunged right into the mess of the corpse’s head, and it came out streaming a brownish ooze whose viscosity was more old mud than brain matter. Working her own jaw, feeling the sting of returning sensation in her fingers, Rebecca began pushing, clawing, trying to get out from underneath all this terrible weight and away from the racket.
Jess kept screaming. For a time, there weren’t even words in that noise, until Jess finally managed to work her mouth into a semblance of shape, encircle the sound she was making and form it.
“Get it out!” she was shrieking. “Get it out, get it out, GET IT OUT!”
That seemed to trigger everyone else. Benny, badly hurt yet again, managed to roll to his left, clutching one dead-weight arm to his chest and crying out every time that arm touched floor. Bleeding scratches were etched down Joel’s throat, and when he touched them, his fingers seemed to sink, as though into marshy grass. Pushing to his feet, he staggered and wound up leaning against the couch, breathing hard. Hopefully, the whistling sound he made wasn’t coming through the rips in his neck.
Behind them, silhouetted against her own shadow, stood Emilia, ax half raised, staring at Rebecca through the thing she’d killed. Shudders racked her, in gusts that faded quickly and left her stone still. In her dark eyes was a glint Rebecca was almost sure hadn’t been there before.
“Thank you,” Rebecca mouthed, pushing herself warily, carefully, to a sitting position. The gash in her side was only a gash, apparently. Already clotting. She thought Emilia might drop the ax and keel over, or else hoist it again and slam it down on anything that got near her.
Instead, Emilia laid it gently on the floor, moved back into the corner from which she’d emerged, and wrapped herself in the blanket.
“Come on, ’Bec,” grunted Joel, peeling his fingers from the scratches in his throat and touching her head as though anointing her. “Let’s … It’s the ’Bec and Joel Show again. Let’s do what we do.” Then he shook his head, almost tilted over again.
Hi, Dad, she thought, though she’d never have said it, not now. She didn’t even mean it, really. But it had been so long. Five years. And suddenly, here Joel was. This was the Joel she’d known her whole time at Halfmoon House. She even felt a flicker of a smile through the tears she hadn’t realized were already welling.
For Kaylene, of course.
Kaylene, Kaylene, Kaylene …
“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to be doing much,” she said, listening to him wheeze.
“I can do some.”
“Not with that neck.”
“Problem’s not the neck. I think I’m concussed.” Weirdly, as though he thought he was making a Joel-joke, he smiled.
“Oh. Well, that’s okay, then,” Rebecca murmured, and made herself smile back.
Back on her feet, Rebecca surveyed the room, the mess beneath her. When Emilia’s ax had bit through skull, Rebecca had half expected beetles to fly out. Horseflies to erupt into the air. As it turned out, though, there was nothing so strange inside this creature. Just cold, dead slush.
It wasn’t even spilling out, just pooling and sinking into the wood. The corpse looked too dry, somehow, papery dust rather than skin and guts. And yet—unlike the Whistler, once Sophie and Rebecca had finished with him—this corpse had lost none of its menace. If anything, it seemed to be spreading across the floor toward their feet. More kudzu vine than spider, but still a threat.
“Get it out,” Jess said, clutching the arm she hadn’t popped back into its socket to her chest.
With Joel barely able to stand, what they eventually did involved more rolling than lifting. More contact with that icy, dead skin—which was weirdly dry, like tree-stump bark—than Rebecca would have liked. And it took too long, so long that Rebecca kept glancing up mid-roll just to make sure that skull wasn’t fitting itself back together. The worst part was that there were things moving inside it. Hair-thin strands of gray pulp that stretched free of gray pulp mass, wriggled onto the floor or under Joel’s shoes, curled up, and twitched. But they did that without volition or effect. Just a few million more living cells grasping desperately at life as it left them, the way everything that ever lived couldn’t help but do.
Why, Rebecca wondered, does life always feel like it’s leaving?
How was it possible that she was still here? There were so many ways she should have died by now. Today’s biggest threat—so far—had turned out not to be the monster that had come for all of them but Emilia’s ax plummeting toward her head. Somehow, Emilia had stopped the blade just in time (or almost in time; there was a nick or, worse, gash still pumping blood down Rebecca’s left cheek). At least now, she really could claim to know how Sophie must have felt on the day Rebecca had accidentally—no, incidentally—driven a shovel through her face.
Jess had somehow stayed standing long enough to drag open the garage door. As Joel and Rebecca shoved and nudged the creature’s corpse through it, Rebecca glanced back toward Emilia’s corner. The woman was sitting up with her hands at her cheeks and her mouth wide open. But she wasn’t crying and hadn’t retreated under her blanket. So that was all right, in the same way Rebecca supposed she herself must be all right or still might be, someday, if only life—meaning death—could leave her the fuck alone just for a few years.
With a grunt, she dropped to her haunches and grabbed the corpse under the shoulders. The movement caught Joel by surprise, and he almost let go completely as Rebecca tugged the creature all the way out of the house. The body proved surprisingly light once Rebecca had its full weight on her. This woman—thing—had seemed so massive while it was alive. But the massiveness had been in her person, in the rage and hunger of her being. The body was already as empty as one of Eddie’s shells. Dry as a bundle of newsprint.
Joel caught the corpse’s feet again and helped Rebecca tug it to the middle of the floor. Behind them, Jess flicked on the overhead light. Rebecca looked up, saw Joel bent to his work, and was suddenly overwhelmed by memories of him in his shed at Halfmoon Lake. Except there, he’d always been singing.
But even ripped open and tilting, he looked so steady, standing there. Like the Joel who kept almost becoming her dad. Working with him in this garage really wasn’t so different than raking leaves at Halfmoon House, back when he’d bobbed and weaved around her, singing “Tongue-Tied Jill” and strumming his hoe while his haunted wife watched from the window, took no part, and loved that he and Rebecca loved each other.
Abruptly, without intention, Joel sat down. The way his hand cupped his throat made him look like Rodin’s Thinker, except bloodier. And tilted. “I think I’m done,” he said.
“Just stay there,” said Rebecca, and went to fetch the lighter fluid.
When she’d finished coating it, she and Joel stared a little longer at the corpse. Its skin looked pitch-black and yet aglow like the surface of a lake. When Rebecca finally glanced up again, she found Joel smiling at her. Holding his throat and smiling.
“Think this will work?”
Rebecca shrugged. “She feels like leaves.”
“Really old ones,” Joel murmured. “Sorry I’ve been away a while, Rebecca. I’m sorry I left you.”
“What are you even talking about?” Rebecca wanted to hug him, and also to stand right here and stare at this creature’s beautiful skin until her own face surfaced inside it.
“I don’t know,” said Joel.
“See?” Suddenly, Rebecca didn’t want to look at the corpse anymore. For one moment, she was so, so close to smiling again. A smile from a long time ago. “Same old, same old.” Even she wasn’t sure what that meant.
Where had the match in his fingers come from? Rebecca didn’t know or care. Joel watched her as he struck it, as though waiting for words, some kind of ceremony. But there was nothing worth saying. She winced at the whoosh of the corpse’s skin catching. Like burning a wasps’ nest, she thought, once again expecting creatures to erupt into the air instead of smoke.
So much smoke. So fast, this woman burned. Almost as though she’d never actually been there. As if they were burning a shadow.
“I’ll stay here until she’s done,” Joel murmured. “There’s one thing I can do. You go.”
Rebecca couldn’t think of one good reason to protest. Turning away, she started back into the house and stopped when she heard the whispering.
“Papá?”
There was a pause. Then an explosion of Spanish, the words unfurling into the night like flags waving. “Soy yo. Soy yo. Estoy bien. Estoy llegando a casa. Estoy … Dile a mamá…”
Stepping back inside, Rebecca found Emilia on a phone, tears pouring down her face. She could hear buzzing and sobbing on the other end but couldn’t make out words, and Emilia never really stopped talking, anyway. She’d laid her glasses on the counter, was holding the phone in both hands, and the same words kept spilling from her lips. “Estoy bien. Soy yo. Soy yo. Estoy bien…”
The swelling in her own chest caught Rebecca by surprise. For one insane second, she caught herself patting her pockets, swinging toward the stairs as though she might rush up to her room (through the mess that had been Kaylene) to grab her phone from the stand by the bed (where, not fifteen minutes ago, they’d had Sophie chained), and punch the phone awake so she could … do what, exactly? Dial whom?
Her parents? Amanda? Jack and the ’Lenes?
Any ’Lene?
Kaylene …
Even as new tears boiled from her eyes, Joel’s arms encircled her from behind. He hugged her against him, the way he hadn’t since their arrival on this coast, and she almost kicked him away but didn’t. She let herself stay, eyes watering at the smell of the creature burning to ash behind them. She didn’t collapse against Joel, couldn’t make herself do that. But she let him hold her. After a few seconds, she even hugged him back. Held on to this other person passing through her life, for as long as life would let her do that, which was never long enough.
They listened to Emilia talk to her mother and father in a language neither of them knew. Across the room, even Jess seemed to be taking a breath from prying the boards off the back sliding door—with a broom handle and one useful hand—and letting herself listen. She was bent against the counter, one injured arm tucked tight against her chest and the other reaching to pet Benny, who knelt at her feet. His breathing sounded saw-edged, harsh, but he kept doing it. For that long, rare moment, they all just stayed still. Held on.
Then Joel’s knees buckled, and he almost bowled Rebecca over as he grunted in surprise and sagged against her.
“It’s okay,” she said, steadying herself against the door, lowering him slowly to a sitting position. His bloodied hands slid off her shoulders and steadied himself against the ground.
“Room keeps tilting,” he murmured.
Rebecca felt fear—her oldest, truest friend—swooping down once more. “You’re okay. You’ll be okay.” She hadn’t meant that as an order. Unless maybe she did.
“I’m okay,” said Joel.
“You sound like you’re responding to a self-help tape.”
“That’s because you’re helping, ’Bec. You’re always helping.”
Of their own volition, his eyes flicked up the stairs toward the landing. That body, apparently, Rebecca would have to dispose of on her own.
“You, too, Joel,” she whispered, letting her tears trickle to nothing. “Okay.”
Not even sure what she was going to do, Rebecca blew out a breath, got steady on her feet, and moved toward the stairs. She could feel Joel watching, and Jess, too. For some reason, she felt grateful that Emilia was still talking, talking, talking. The sound of her voice somehow provided a sort of cover, or at least comforting background hum. She’d reached the foot of the steps, was telling herself to just keep going, head up and kneel beside the body of her last, best friend and hold her hand for a while, just in case there was still any vestige of Kaylene left to say good-bye to. Start to say good-bye to, somehow.
But Jess stopped her. As Rebecca had known, from the second she’d left Joel’s side, that Jess would.
“Hey, Rebecca. Do I look as tired as you?”
Rebecca didn’t want to stop moving. Even more, for reasons she couldn’t immediately fathom, she didn’t want to turn around. She heard the garage door close as Joel somehow dragged himself back out there to monitor and eventually extinguish the corpse-fire.
But this was Jess talking. What choice was there?
She turned. Jess’s eyelids had slid down over those icy-blue eyes, almost closed, almost crooked, like mispulled blinds. “You look even more tired,” Rebecca finally said.
“Then I look dead.”
Rebecca shook her head. “You look too tired to be dead.”
Briefly, she thought one of them might smile. Try to. They just stared at each other instead until Jess’s gaze drifted up the stairs. Her mouth turned down at the corners, and her throat jerked. Rebecca realized all over again how much she loved and was grateful to this woman. How much this woman had let herself love Rebecca, in spite of everything.
She was either going to say that or go over there and find the least painful way to exchange an embrace when Jess said, “Rebecca. You’ve got to go get Eddie.”
So many things she might have expected Jess to say, and that one most of all. And yet Rebecca hadn’t expected it. “What?” She glanced upstairs, saw Kaylene’s flowered tights, one purple shoe dangling off her toes over the edge of the stair. “Jess, just tell Trudi to—”
“Are you kidding?” Abruptly, Jess’s voice was all ice and edge. Or exhaustion and panic. All those things Jess kept frozen deep in the center of herself. “Sophie’s still out there.”
“Sophie’s not going to…” But even as she started, Rebecca shook her own head. Acknowledged her own inanity. What made her think she had any idea what Sophie might do? Sophie, whom’d they all just burned, stabbed, chained to a bed? Tried to murder. Again.
“Take the ax,” Jess continued. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Not well enough,” said Rebecca, watching herself move across the room, ease it away from Emilia.
“Then just … stay out of Sophie’s way. She’s hurt, I think.”
Rebecca nodded. “She’s pretty hurt.”
“For now. Maybe this is our chance. Our last one. Get Trudi back here. Get my daughter’s son. Please.”
At Jess’s feet, Benny stirred. “No,” he said. “Jess, that’s cra—”
“Okay,” Rebecca heard herself say.
“And if you get a chance,” Jess said. “If she really is hurt. If you find her, and you can do it … you have to finish this, Rebecca. For all of our sakes.”
Only at the front door did Rebecca turn. Ax in one hand, knife in the other, neither of which she felt confident she could use. “You realize Sophie saved us,” she said.
“She saved herself. Don’t be fooled. I sure as hell never will be again, I promise you that. And I care about you, and Eddie, and Trudi, and the memory of my daughter, and everyone else in this house too much to let any of you be fooled. It’s too dangerous. My daughter is dead, Rebecca. Your friends are dead. Your foster mom is dead. None of those are ever coming back. It’s enough. No more.”
Her voice had risen steadily, but now, with a visible effort, Jess controlled it. Partly, she did that by jerking her dangling arm against her ribs, which wrenched a gasp from her clamped lips. But the pain worked its dark magic. Suddenly, she was Jess again. Exhausted, heartbroken, full of love. “I adored that girl, Rebecca. Even when I hated what she and my daughter got up to together, I adored her. I will treasure her memory. But that thing isn’t her. And this has to stop. I will not let her do to anyone else what she has done to us. I’ll take care of her myself, if you won’t. I should have done it five years ago.”
“I’m going to try not to find her,” Rebecca said.
“Fine. That’s what I want. I want you to come home. But Rebecca. I want you to do that with our kids.”
Our. Kids.
After that, there were no more arguments to make. “Okay,” she said.
“I’m coming,” said Joel, staggering through the garage door with smoke from the extinguished fire billowing around him. He got two whole steps in her direction before slumping against the wall and staring at her with his head lolling and his eyes tearing.
Rebecca quieted him with a single glance. “Stay here. I’ve got this. Pops.” Her gaze left his and floated across the room toward Emilia. That person, she thought, can handle an ax.
At least, she could when she wasn’t sobbing into a phone. She was actually more whisper-singing, now, as though cooing a lullaby to a baby. Except she was the baby, newly reborn. And she was singing the song to her parents. Some sort of lilting, South American–sounding thing.
This wasn’t Emilia’s fight. And Emilia had been through enough.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Jess said. “Get out there and bring our family home.”
Rebecca settled the ax against her hip and took two steps up toward the landing for a last look at her dead best friend. From where she stood now, she could just see Kaylene’s body. Not her face, which was turned down into the still-spreading pool of itself on the floorboards, but her hair spilling across the floor. One stripy-dressed arm flung wide.
Apparently, crying really was over for now. There were kids to rescue. People she loved to fight for. How astonishing, really, to find that she still had anyone left, after everyone the world had already taken. One could almost believe there always would be, if you allowed there to be.
“You know where you’re going?” Jess asked when Rebecca turned.
“Trudi said ‘cave,’ right?”
“Yeah.”
Rebecca shook her head. “The one place we never thought to look. How did we never think to look there, Jess?”
“We’re not five years old.”
“Or sock-puppet masters.”
“Or monsters,” Jess said.
“Rebecca, I still don’t think you should do this by your…” Joel started.
But she was already gone, slamming the front door shut behind her, shutting her family safely inside.
Overhead, the sky had sucked all the mist back into itself and unleashed the moon. It glowed all over everything, glossing the grass, the leaves of the trees, the very air. Was it even midnight yet? Rebecca wondered. Was this … just another Saturday? Was this a Saturday night?
Just another night, yielding yet another dead loved one to tell stories about someday or every day. Another set of memories that would scream through her dreams for as long as she dreamed. Another something she’d somehow survived to share and mourn over with other survivors. The essence of living.
Even in the trees, moonlight permeated everything. It felt almost wet as Rebecca brushed through it. Owls swiveled silently in the branches above her, watching in her wake for night squirrels, moles, any little scurrying thing her passing might have jostled into the open.
Stay down, little things, she thought. If you can.
Hold on, Eddie.
Watch him, Trudi.
I’m coming.