She pulled up suddenly, her nose wrinkling. Weird. That strange, charred smell was back, and stronger now, and strangely sweet. Perhaps it had been stronger for some time, but she’d been too preoccupied to notice, or had simply gotten used to the stink. Only now she sensed—smelled—something else. She dragged in a deep, full breath and then flinched at the slap of some horrible, almost alien odor.
Oh my God, what is that?
The stink was gutchurning: dead, stagnant, and gassy, like days-old roadkill stewing beneath an insanely hot sun. The reek was so strong it pillowed and balled in her mouth. She spat, but the taste clung, furring her tongue.
Just ahead, she spotted Ellie’s pink parka crouching behind a very thick snarl of underbrush. She very nearly called out, but one look at Ellie and the words jammed behind her teeth at the same moment she realized something else.
She could smell Ellie again, and over a distance of, what, twenty yards? Thirty? The smell was strong, too—not enough to overpower that roadkill stink, but it was the same complex aroma she’d smelled once before, on the mountain: a reek of curdled milk and sour breath.
Fear. Ellie was scared. No, Ellie was terrified. The air was a welter of odors: Ellie’s fear, that charry, sweet stench; her own peculiar perfume of sweat and anxiety; and that dead-meat stink that billowed through the woods like ashy, gray smoke.
Ellie did not look around. She’d clapped her hands over her mouth, and her eyes bulged as she stared at something beyond a dense veil of branches.
What was Ellie looking at? Something told Alex she really didn’t want to know. The lizard part of her brain was screaming for her to run, run, run! But she couldn’t leave Ellie behind, not like this; that wouldn’t be right.
Slowly, carefully, Alex dropped to her knees, the cold earth biting through her hiking pants. Ellie didn’t move a muscle. Wordlessly, Alex followed the girl’s horrified gaze—and then her blood turned to slush.
No, she thought. No, please, God, I’m not seeing this.
14
The tent had burned and melted at the same time. What was left clung in cold, hard, black ash clots to scorched aluminum poles, like petrified meat on the fossilized ribs of a prehistoric dinosaur. An overturned cookpot vomited a coagulated brown spew that had slopped over the stones ringing the fire pit and seeped into the dirt. A murder of crows hopped around a scatter of their fallen kind, and as Alex watched, one leaned over, stabbed with a very black beak at a dead woodpecker, and came up with something blue and stringy that it tossed back into its maw with a snap.
Next to the cold fire pit were two people: a girl and a boy. The girl was blonde and wore a powder-blue sweatshirt with the words SOMERVILLE HIGH and a tennis racket stenciled in white.
Oh my God. She knew this girl. Where? Yes, when she’d stopped to gas up and call Aunt Hannah.
The girl was Ponytail Blonde.
She didn’t recognize the boy, although he’d probably been on the same bus. He was reedy, mostly legs with a platform for a head. His sweatshirt, also light blue with the same lettering, featured a basketball.
In another life, they might have been a couple, having a picnic.
Except these kids weren’t munching sandwiches.
There was also a woman, a grandmotherly sort who lay flat on the ground, head thrown back, mouth unhinged. A pair of eyeglasses on a keeper chain dragged in the dirt. Judging from the dried rills of blood on her right cheek, that eye was gone.
So was her throat.
The skin was ripped, the knobby tube of her windpipe slopping out like a fleshy tapeworm. The blood—and there had been a lot of it—had dried to rust in a wide bib over the woman’s chest. From the way her hands were clawed, Alex thought she’d been clutching her belly when she died. Hadn’t done the woman any good either, judging from the way her guts boiled out in a dusky, desiccated tangle, like limp spaghetti.
The boy and girl were eating. Stuffing their faces, actually. Splashes of blood smeared their mouths and dripped over their chins like runny clown’s makeup. With a grunt, the boy plunged his fist into the woman’s abdomen and rooted around before coming back up with a drippy fistful of something liverish and soft enough that Alex could hear the squelch as the meaty thing oozed between his fists.
Oh. My. God. Alex felt the low moan begin in her chest and clapped a hand to her mouth to stopper it back up. Her vision bloomed with black roses, and she felt her head going a little swimmy.
Squealing, Ponytail Blonde made a grab for her companion’s tasty treat, but Basketball Boy let out a warning grunt and batted her hands away. Pouting—yes, Alex thought crazily, she’s pissed—Ponytail Blonde tossed her head hard enough to make her filthy hair dance. Then, turning away from the boy, the girl jabbed with two stiff fingers and gouged out the woman’s left eye. She gave the slick, bloody globe a triumphant wave, as if taunting her basketball-playing boyfriend, but he paid no attention and kept chowing down on whatever it was he’d pulled out. With another toss of her head, Ponytail Blonde popped the eye into her mouth like a grape.
At that, Ellie let out a very tiny—but very distinct—squeak.
Alex’s heart tried to blast right out of her chest. Ellie, no, shut up, shu—
The boy and the girl went still.
No, no, no … Alex watched in a kind of sick free fall of terror as Ponytail Blonde stiffened and then lifted her nose and sniffed. Testing the air, checking for intruders, trying to catch a scent—Alex understood that at once. After all, she smelled them, the dead woman, the burned tent, Ellie’s fear.
She and Ellie needed to get out of here, maybe make a run for it. There was enough light to see the trail. If she just flat-out dug in and ran, she might outdistance them. Alex had endurance; she was still shaky from this morning, but thank God, she was months out from chemo and strong enough. Except these kids were once athletes and they were acting like, well, animals. Real animals. So they were probably pretty fast, and even if Alex could get away, she didn’t think Ellie could.
She realized then that her hand had strayed to her Glock and thumbed away the retaining strap without her being aware at all. Could she do that? She’d only shot at targets, never anything alive, and her conscious mind balked: No, they’re kids; they’re my age. There’s no way I can just shoot them.
In the end, she never had to find out.
A crow saved them. Emboldened by the lack of reaction to its presence, the crow—very large and very stupid—decided to try its luck. It hopped up to Basketball Boy, hesitated, and then snatched at a stray lump of the liverish meat that had tumbled to the dirt.