Our packs sit on Paige’s chair, and if I close my eyes, I can almost pretend it’s her I’m pushing. I catch myself humming what I thought was a meaningless tune. I stop when I realize it’s my mother’s apology song.
I put one foot in front of the other, trying to ignore the too-light weight of the wheelchair and the wingless angel beside me.
There are a lot of cars strewn on the road until we hit the freeway entrance. Here, there are only a couple of cars pointed up the hill. Everyone tried to get on the freeway to get away in the early days. I’m not sure where they were going. I guess they weren’t either since the freeway is clogged in both directions.
It’s not long before we see the first body.
CHAPTER 12
A family lying in a pool of blood.
A man, a woman, a girl about ten years old. The child is at the edge of the woods while the adults are in the middle of the road. Either the kid ran for it when the parents were attacked, or she hid during the attack and was caught when she came out.
They haven’t been dead for long. I know because the blood on their tattered clothes is still bright red. I have to swallow and fight to keep the cat food in my stomach.
Their heads are intact. Thankfully, the girl's hair has been blown over her face. Their bodies, though, are in bad shape. For one thing, parts of their torso have been chewed down to the bones with bits of flesh still stuck to it. For another, a few arms and legs are missing. I don't have the guts to take a closer look but Raffe does.
“Teeth marks,” he says as he kneels on the asphalt in front of the man’s body.
“What kind of animal are we talking about?”
He sits crouched near the bodies, considering my question. “The kind with two legs and flat teeth.”
My stomach roils. “What are you saying? That they’re human?”
“Maybe. Unusually sharp, but human-shaped.”
“Can’t be.” But I know it can. Humans will do what is needed to survive. Still, it doesn’t add up. “This is too wasteful. If you’re desperate enough to cannibalize, you wouldn’t just take a few bites and leave.” But these bodies have more than a few bites taken out of them. Now that I make myself really look, I can see they are half eaten. Still, why leave half behind?
Raffe peers at the place where the kid's leg should be. “The limbs have been ripped right out of their sockets.”
“Enough,” I say as I take two steps back. I scan our surroundings. We’re in an open field, and I feel as nervous as a field mouse looking at a sky full of hawks.
“Well,” he says as he gets up, scanning the trees. “Let's hope whoever did this is still in control of this area.”
“Why?”
“Because they won't be hungry.”
That doesn’t make me feel better. “You're pretty sick, you know that?”
“Me? It isn't my people who did this.”
“How do you know? You have the same teeth we do.”
“But my people aren’t desperate.” He says this as if the angels had nothing to do with us being desperate. “Nor are they insane.”
That's when I see the broken egg.
It lies on the side of the road near the kid, the yolk brown and the egg white congealed. The stench of sulfur hits my nose. It's the familiar reek that infused my clothes, pillow and hair for the last two years throughout Mom’s rotten egg kick. Beside it, there is a small bouquet of wild sprigs. Rosemary and sage. Either my mother thought they were pretty, or her insanity has taken on a very dark sense of humor.
It doesn't mean anything other than she was here. That's all. She couldn't take on an entire family.
But she could overtake a ten-year-old coming back from her hiding place after her parents were killed.
She was here and walked by the bodies, just as we are doing. That's all.
Really, that's all.
“Penryn?”
I realize Raffe's been talking to me.
“What?”
“Could they be kids?”
“Could what be kids?”
“The attackers,” he says slowly. Obviously, I’ve missed a piece of the conversation. “As I’ve said, the bite marks seem too small to be adults.”
“They must be animals.”
“Animals with flat teeth?”
“Yes,” I say with more conviction than I feel. “That makes more sense than a kid taking down an entire family.”
“But not more sense than a gang of feral children attacking them.” I try to shoot him a look that says he’s crazy, but I suspect I only succeed in looking scared. My brain buzzes with images of what might have happened here.
He says something about avoiding the road and heading uphill through the forest. I nod without really hearing the details and follow him into the trees.
CHAPTER 13
We mostly have evergreens in California, but there’s enough fall foliage that covers the forest. We can’t help but crunch at every step. I don’t know about other parts of the world, but at least in our hills, I’m convinced that the whole story of skilled woodsmen walking silently through the woods is a myth. For one thing, there’s simply no place to walk during autumn where you can avoid the fallen leaves. For another, even the squirrels and deer, birds and lizards make enough noise in these hills to make them seem like much larger animals.
The good news is that the rains drenched the leaves, which dampens the sound. The bad news is that I can’t navigate the wheelchair on the wet hillside.
Dead leaves get trapped in the spokes as I struggle to force it forward. To lighten the load, I strap the sword onto my pack and carry them on my back. I throw the other pack to Raffe to carry. Still the chair skids and slips on the wet leaves, constantly heading downhill as I struggle to roll it crosswise. Our progress slows to a crawl. Raffe offers no help but neither does he offer sarcastic suggestions.
We eventually pick out a clear path that seems to go in the general direction we want to head. The ground is mostly level on the trail and there is far less foliage on it. But the rains have turned the dirt trail into a mud bath. I don’t know how well the chair will work in the mud, and I’d rather keep it running in smooth condition. So I fold the chair and carry it. That works for awhile, in an uncomfortable, awkward way. The most I’ve ever carried the chair before was a flight or two of stairs.