Eaters (20 page)

Behind the cabin, there was a small clearing, a sea of stumps where Aidan had cut trees to build the cabin or to make firewood. It was dappled with sunlight and contained a picnic table that looked handmade and a fire pit ringed with stones. At the far edge of the clearing, there was nothing but dark forest that looked like a boundary to another world where anyone or anything could be silently watching her.

After staring that way for a few seconds, she heard the snap of a twig and raised her gun, pointing towards the abyss. Her heart raced as she kept it trained on the area where she’d heard the sound. It was good to know that the shotgun could blow someone’s head off at close range, but would it be enough to stop someone from this far out if they suddenly came charging towards her? Maybe she should have kept the AK. It was easier to spray a shower of bullets and hit a target than have to be committed to just a few shots.

Thud. Thud. Snap.

Her finger was on the trigger when a deer emerged. It ran a few steps forward out into the clearing then wobbled and fell to its knees in a thick layer of pine needles. She lowered her gun and told her heart to skip the mambo and fall back to a waltz. But as the deer’s head flopped over to the side, landing on a stump, she saw reason to keep her guard up. There was a gaping bloody hole in its neck, and the wound was wet with shiny red blood. It did not look like it had been caused by a hunter, the impact of a car, or an encounter with a wild animal; it looked like someone had grabbed it around the throat and had started eating.

She stood completely still for a moment, listening for any sound that would indicate that someone was following the deer. To her surprise, no one came crashing through the woods. There was silence, except for a shrill whine from the deer as it closed its eyes.

Keeping watch on the area at the back of the clearing, Cheryl walked sideways, making her way around the back of the cabin. She backed up around the corner with her gun pointed in front of her and nearly tripped on an overturned trashcan, painted with a wide streak of blood across the side. It was surrounded by shards of glass, and up above her head, she could see the kitchen window that had been broken into.

She noticed movement near her feet and looked down. There were black ants swarming out of the trashcan, and a large group of them were huddled together, carrying something away. She bent down for a closer look at the thing that looked like a crumpled leaf or a piece of leather. Upon closer inspection, she realized that it was a human ear. She gasped and stumbled backwards, not wanting to see what other horrific treasures the ants might have found inside the can.

Given the wisp of blond hair inside and the lost ear outside, it seemed possible that someone—
a very sick someone—
had already been in a state of advanced decay at the time they’d broken in. She swung her gun around one hundred-eighty degrees, checking all sides for any sign that they were still around. Other than the dying deer, there was nothing to indicate that there was. The woods were silent, except for a few chirping birds up above.

The sound of hammering made her jump. She turned around and saw Aidan on the other side of the window. He nodded to her, and she noticed Kyle behind him, helping to hold up a two-by-four. She gave him a curt wave then started making her way around to the front of the cabin.

When she neared the edge of the deck, just below the gazebo, she paused. Something seemed terribly wrong about this scenario. There were Eaters coming up the mountain, and Eaters going down. Break ins. Dying animals. Body parts. Obviously, this wasn’t the safe haven they had hoped for.

Suddenly, her head began to buzz with a vibrating noise. She swung her gun around to the left and the right, unsure of where the sound was coming from as the forest sounded like it was filled with giant bugs.
Were there locusts in the mountains?
After a couple of seconds, the buzzing died away, like someone had simply turned down the volume between her ears
. Nerves—just my nerves
, she told herself as she quickly ran up the steps.

Back inside, she saw Claire on the couch, now sitting upright with a vacant, unblinking stare. She rushed past her, went into the kitchen and told Aidan and Kyle about what she’d seen outside. Aidan ran to the back door to have a look at the deer as Kyle peered over his shoulder.

“It definitely looks dead. We can’t leave it there. Who knows what the smell would attract?”

“What are we going to do with it then?” Cheryl asked.

Kyle’s voice cracked and went up an octave. “Can’t we drive it up the road and dump it somewhere?”

“That’s a bad idea,” Cheryl scoffed. “Driving around with a hunk of dead meat like that would be like Meals on Wheels. We might as well ring the dinner bell while we’re driving. And bringing the scent of a dead animal in the truck back here might not be a good thing.”

“Why don’t we bury it then?”

Aidan shook his head. “With the hard-packed soil and all the tree roots around here, that would take hours. It would be dark before we finished, and I don’t think we want to be outside at night. I’ve got a freezer in the garage. We could put it in there, but we’d have to chop it up first.

Cheryl closed her eyes for a moment, wincing at the thought of butchering the animal. “That would be a lot of blood. The smell—” She still believed that the Eaters smelled their prey.

“You’re right. We should just leave it, but maybe drag it further away from the cabin back into the woods. As soon as we finish with the window, we’ll do it.”

She saw Kyle turn a lighter shade of pale at Aidan’s suggestion when he glanced back towards the deer. She didn’t blame him. The body lay in dappled sunlight, and the woods beyond were pitch black. It was easy to imagine rotting, bony hands waiting in the shadows to grab the first living creature that came near. Whoever took a bite out of that deer might still be nearby.

“We’ll be alright,” Aidan said. “Why don’t you check on Claire and see if you can perk her up?”

Cheryl went back to the living room, where she found Claire staring at the static on the television. She sat down beside her, not sure what to say to comfort her that wouldn’t ring hollow.

Still staring straight ahead, Claire said, “I’ve…I’ve never seen anyone shot before.”

“Me neither, before a few days ago.” Cheryl reached out to touch her arm, but Claire flinched and turned away with a look of disgust.

“You shot those guys like they were nothing.”

“Given the chance, they would have killed all of us!” How could she make Claire understand the situation without her having seen an Eater murder someone by tearing them apart one mouthful at time? Was this how Mark had felt when he tried to get the crew in the sandwich shop to realize the danger? Mark’s ghost whispered in her ear.
Yeah, babe. You’re starting to get it.

“This is going to be over soon, right? Then, we can go back to town. Who’s gonna feed my cats? My sister is probably worried about me, since we were supposed to be back this afternoon. She was watering my garden. I need to call her, but there’s no dial tone on the phone. Kyle’s cell doesn’t work now, either. I really should…”

As she talked, all Cheryl could think about was the fact that she hadn’t peed in half a day. She desperately wanted to go to the bathroom. “I’ll be back,” she said, and walked away while Claire kept rambling.

After she shut the bathroom door and laid her gun against the back of it, she sat on the toilet and tried to go. She hadn’t realized how dehydrated she was until only a trickle of orange came out. After days of little to eat or drink, it was amazing that she didn’t feel very hungry or thirsty. Apparently, she had been living on adrenaline.

When she finished, she flushed and looked at herself in the mirror. With the dark circles under her eyes, her wild hair, and her crusty fingernails, she figured it would be easy for someone to mistake her for an Eater. If another National Guard tank came along, they might shoot her on sight.

There was still a dull ache at the back of her neck where the hair had been ripped out during the charge through the horde. She felt the spot with her fingers and found them sticky with dark blood when she looked at them. She was less concerned about the cosmetic effect of the hole in her scalp than the fact that her long blonde locks could have gotten her killed. The ghoul that had grabbed her hair from behind could have pulled her right off the motorcycle. If he’d succeeded, there’d be nothing left of her now but a pile of bones and red matted hair in the middle of that mountain road.

It had been stupid to drive right through the middle of so many Eaters, but she reminded herself that they really had no other choice. She wondered if Mark would have done the same thing, and after a moment of thinking about it, she decided that he would have. He would have done anything it took to keep fighting and keep them alive.

She stared into her weary eyes in the mirror. They looked like a kaleidoscope of brown and yellow flecks with bloodshot streaks of lightning marring the white. She splashed cool water on her face then gulped mouthfuls of it. After drying her hands on the towel next to the sink, she began searching through drawers.

A few minutes later, she came out of the bathroom and saw that Claire was no longer on the couch. She found her in the kitchen rummaging through cupboards. When Cheryl walked in, she jumped.

“I thought I might fix something to eat. You hungry?”

Yesterday, all she’d had was a moldy donut and a charred burger. She should be starving. “Sure.”

“I found some canned beans. Maybe some pasta would be—”

Cheryl noticed that the window was boarded up and cut her off. “Where are the guys?”

“Out back, moving the deer.”

Cheryl rushed out of the kitchen and went to the back door, knowing that they couldn’t both move the deer and keep their fingers on a trigger at the same time. When she looked out, the clearing was empty with no sign of man or beast.

Oh God…how far back into the woods did they go?

She waited a few seconds, hoping they’d appear. When they didn’t, she stepped outside. The sun was past its afternoon peak and was starting its slow decline in a hazy glow over the conical tips of the trees, shrouding them in darker shadows.

She was halfway across the clearing when she stopped. What exactly was she planning to do? There was no chance that she was going into the forest to look for them. She propped one foot on top of a stump and waited. After a couple of excruciatingly long minutes, she heard the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs coming towards her. She aimed her gun.

Aidan and Kyle appeared. Their guns were slung over their shoulders and they were laughing. They seemed startled when they saw her.

“Cheryl?” Aidan said. What are you doing?”

“Watching your ass,” she said. “Why didn’t you wait for me to cover you?”

“We’re fine. We dragged the deer about twenty yards back. Hopefully, that’s far enough away from the cabin to not draw anything too near.”

Kyle had a smug look on his face like he’d just completed a serious mission and found his manhood for the first time.
Damn lucky
, she thought. Any one of those trees could have come alive and grabbed them before they knew what hit them.

“What did you do to your hair?”

She rubbed her hand over the short spikes, thinking that Aidan’s question smacked of disapproval. “Cut off the scalp handles. I figured, next time, it’ll give them a little less to grab onto.”

Aidan felt for the remaining long strands of his own hair at the nape of his neck, just above the raw bare spot, seeming to remember his own close call when they barged through the crowd on his motorcycle. “Guess it wouldn’t hurt to lose the rest of this.”

They both glanced at Kyle’s stubbly brown hair. Cheryl thought his main weakness wasn’t his thick glasses or his nerdy personality. It was the timid way that he just followed Aidan around, not taking any lead himself. But then again, he hadn’t seen the horrors that they had seen. A man (or a woman) could shore up real quick, tempering their inner mettle, if confronted with the battering ram of constant danger.

On the way back in, she showed them the tipped over trashcan on the side of the cabin. Aidan righted it. “There’s nothing else in it. Maybe the creep just lost an ear when he was coming out of the smashed window.”

“I didn’t see any sign of where he went. There’s no blood trail.”

“Hopefully, that means he’s long gone.”

When they got back inside, they found Claire boiling fettuccine noodles on the stove. She seemed lost in the bliss of the steam over the pot and didn’t look up to acknowledge their entrance. Kyle walked over to her and put his arms around her from behind, lay his head on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear.

Aidan looked away as if the sight of such affection was too painful for him. Cheryl stared, remembering Mark’s gentle touch, the way he used to sneak up on her from behind, that last morning together in the shower.

“I’m going out to the garage. Can you come help me in a few minutes? I want to get all the guns in here.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to help Claire, then, I’ll be out.”

After Aidan went out and Claire and Kyle parted, she helped Claire find some bowls and forks while Kyle returned to the living room.