Wilder Girls(49)

Fuck.

“I need some air,” I say.

I stumble out the back of the house into what used to be a small square of yard. Around me, Raxter Irises, their stems crumpling underfoot, and I think of the vases full of them that we kept everywhere at school, their petals blackening as they fell, of the dried bouquet tucked up among the pictures on the mantelpiece of the Harker house. Her parents’ wedding bouquet, Reese told me that first day we visited. Even after her mom left and they cleared out all the pictures, she kept that.

   Was it really so clear to her? That it was me and Byatt first, and her second? Even with how badly I’ve always wanted Reese closer, that didn’t change the fact that Byatt was the one who waited for me at breakfast every morning. Byatt was the one who cut my hair and showed me which side to part it on. Byatt was the one who put the bones in my body.

I drop down onto the porch, cradle my numb hands to my mouth, and breathe the feeling back into them. Byatt is what matters right now. She’s the only thing. Soon the people on the other end of the walkie will show up to collect Mona. Wherever they take her, that’s where Byatt will be. And I’ll find a way to get there.

I’m expecting Camp Nash, where the Navy and the CDC are headquartered. And it turns my stomach to think of Byatt taken off Raxter. I never knew her off the island. The closest I ever got to it was that day on the ferry across from the mainland, when I first saw her, sea laid out behind her, and Raxter on the horizon, her hair unfurling in the wind. When I find her on the mainland, will she still be my Byatt?

A noise from inside the house. I leap to my feet, grab the shotgun. Somebody’s talking, somebody who isn’t Reese.

I barrel into the house. Nobody here but us.

   “You heard that?” Reese says, and I nod.

“Welch coming back, maybe? Or someone from Camp Nash?”

“It sounded different,” she says. “Familiar. I don’t know.”

“There.” I point out through the shattered walls into the trees, where something else is moving, coming our way. The shape of a man.





CHAPTER 14


I raise the shotgun. Too dark to see a face, but there’s something familiar about the build of him, something that stays my finger on the trigger.

“Hello?” I call.

No answer, but he’s closer now, almost to the house. I can imagine it as he steps up onto the porch. The shape of him warped by the old glass in the windows at Raxter. The sound of his voice over the hum of a lawn mower. And then he’s through the doorway, a soft creak as he crosses the surviving floorboards, and he’s lifting his head and there’s a tear in his shirt and a cut on his cheek, but I know him. Even in the dark, I’d know him anywhere.

“Dad?” Reese breathes.

It’s Mr. Harker.

Until he eases into the red glow of the flare light, and it isn’t anymore.

   “Oh God.” My voice sounds strange, muffled and far away. “Reese, Reese, I’m so sorry.”

Because it’s his face, and it’s his body, but I don’t think anything else is left. His skin bleached and pulling, his mouth sprouting roots. Branches burrowing in ears and under fingernails and slinking down his arms. And unblinking, eyes still his, pupils blown wide as he watches us.

More than a year out here, alone with the Tox. What did we expect?

“No,” Reese is saying. I grab hold of her arm, haul her back a few steps. She’s barely on her feet, and she stumbles, collapses to her knees. “No, no, Dad.”

But he’s not here anymore. “We have to go,” I say. “Come on, Reese. Now.”

He looks at me, cocks his head as he opens his mouth, takes a long, rattling breath. Black, splitting teeth, and a nest of green at the back of his throat. The air musty and sour, so pungent I can taste it.

I lift the shotgun, get ready to aim, but Reese shoves me away, looks up at me with a feral light in her eyes. Behind her, Mr. Harker advancing, step by step, vines unspooling from his mouth.

“Don’t you dare,” she says, and her voice breaks open, raw underneath.

“Please,” I say. “We have to run.”

It’s too late. A vine writhes up Reese’s legs, along her spine, and another curls around her arm, jerks it back. A cry, and a crack of bone. Her right shoulder pops, hangs wrong in its socket.

   I lunge for her, grab my knife from my belt. Slash once, twice, at the vines holding her. Mr. Harker shrieks, rears back and drags her with him.

“Hetty!” Reese yells.

The shotgun. But when I fire into the heart of him, it makes no difference. He only roars and pulls tighter on Reese’s arm, winds a vine around her throat and starts to squeeze.

I could run. I could save myself and get back past the fence, back to the house. All I’ve got is my knife now. And what good is that against Mr. Harker?

But there’s no choice to make. I break for him. Duck the thickest vine as it swings around, feel the thorns rip down my back, and there he is. I crash into him, and we tumble to the ground. Dirt in my mouth, the scrape of bark against my skin. My knife knocked from my hand, and I scramble for it across the damp earth.

A vine locks around my ankle, yanks me onto my back. I graze my knife with my fingers, but it’s too far—I can’t—and he’s pulling me away.