Devils Unto Dust(41)

Micah moves toward the body and we all jump. Ben grabs him by the shoulder and yanks him back.

“Are you cracked?”

Micah shrugs off Ben’s hand. “She’s not moving, she’s dead.”

“Just cause she ain’t moving don’t mean she’s dead,” Curtis tells him.

“Well, we can’t know for sure until we turn her,” Micah points out.

I use their momentary distraction to inch closer to the body. By the time they see what I’m doing, I’ve seized the body by the shoulder and rolled her over. Ben snatches me around the waist and lifts me away as the rest of the boys hightail it backward. We’re more than a horse length out of reach when everyone realizes the body hasn’t shifted. Curtis slowly lowers his gun and Micah stops fumbling for the rifle on his back.

“I think you can put me down now,” I say to Ben, who still has one arm around me and the other full with his gun. He sets me down, none too gently.

“What the hell are you thinking? You got a death wish?” He’s genuinely mad, and I wish I could tell him the truth. There’s nothing that can hurt me now. In a way, I finally feel free; I have nothing to fear, because the worst has already happened.

“She’s dead,” Sam interrupts, kneeling by the body.

“You sure?” Curtis asks.

“Why do y’all keep asking me that? I may not be the best doctor, but I can tell when someone’s not breathing,” Sam says crossly.

He’s right; now that she’s on her back, we can all see that her chest is still and lifeless. It’s hard to tell how old she was; her body is so thin, almost mummified, the bones jutting out plainly. Her skin is like paper, dried out from the fever that burned up her insides. No breath issues from her cracked lips, and her eyes stare out, blind and milky.

“I don’t see any gunshots,” I say, moving my eyes away from her face.

“Maybe other shakes killed her?” Micah suggests.

“Naw,” Ben answers. “They don’t attack one another like they do us. They’ll eat their dead, but they don’t kill their own. Don’t know why.”

“Something about the way they smell, maybe,” Curtis says.

“Then what killed her?” Micah asks.

Sam struggles to his feet and shrugs. “I don’t see any external wounds, so the disease, I reckon. Fever, sunstroke, seizure when her brain swelled. Nothing to do for it.”

“Poor girl,” I say, shivering despite the heat.

“It’s easy to feel pity when they’re already dead,” Curtis says, quietly. “But alive, she would’ve killed you soon as looked at you, and felt nothing for it.”

“I know,” I tell him. “Believe me, I know. But she was somebody’s daughter once, and she never asked for this.”

She looks sad. Sad, and confused. I’ve always wondered how much they understand. They feel pain, but what else is in their fever-cooked minds? Something drives them, fear or anger or hunger. Do they know what they are, what they’ve become? Are they still in there somewhere, trapped and unable to get out? That would be the cruelest joke of all.

And what if they are aware? What if it isn’t the fever that sends them lunging at the healthy, teeth snapping and fingers tearing? Maybe we have it wrong. Maybe this is what humans are truly like, when you take away reason and control and hope. Maybe the shakes aren’t sick; maybe they’re just honest.

We leave the woman where we found her. It feels disrespectful, but we have no shovels and no time for grave digging. I comfort myself with the thought that whoever she was, that girl died a long time ago. This heap of teeth and finger bones is no more a person than husked-off snakeskin; it’s just meaningless leftovers shriveling in the sun.

We only make it a few steps before we hear the growling.





33.


The coyote stares at us with black eyes, his mottled gray fur bristled and his shoulders hunched forward. His ears lie almost flat along his skull, hackles raised, and I don’t need to see the old blood and spit around his muzzle to know what’s wrong with him.

“Nobody move,” Curtis says in a whisper. His knuckles are white on Nana’s lead, he’s gripping so hard. “Everyone stay very, very still.”

The coyote wrinkles his lips back and growls deep in his throat. The sound raises the fine hairs along my arms. My muscles clench, preparing to fight without my direction.

“Easy, boy,” Ben says, keeping his voice low.

The coyote snarls, loud and sharp, and everything in me screams to turn and flee. My mind knows it would be on top of me in a moment, shredding me with those teeth and those claws, but my body just wants to run, run, run. Does it ever get to be too much, when your body can’t take it anymore and stops reacting? Even now, with poison making its slow way through my veins, my body is fighting to stay alive.

There’s a soft click, and it takes all my focus to not whip my head around. I take a deep breath and turn my head unhurriedly. Curtis is pulling his gun from his belt, so slowly I have to keep watching to make sure he’s moving at all.

The coyote shifts, his shoulders arching. He takes one step forward, and then another, his eyes focused on Curtis.

“Curtis,” Ben says, hissing at his brother. “Shoot it.”

“Quiet,” Curtis hisses back.