Requiem

Coral slows us down. She has no visible injuries, now that she has bathed and had various cuts and scrapes bandaged, but she is obviously weak. She falls behind as soon as we begin to move, and Alex hangs back with her. In the early part of the day, even though I try to ignore it, I can hear the ribbon of their conversation weaving up and through the other voices. Once, I hear Alex burst out laughing.

In the afternoon, we come across a large oak. Its trunk has been gouged and slashed with various lines. I let out a cry of recognition as soon as I see it: a triangle, followed by a number and a rudimentary arrow. It’s Bram’s knife pattern, the specific series of markings he used during relocation from the northern homestead last year to mark our progress and help us find our way back in the spring.

This mark I remember specifically; it indicates the way to a house we came across last year, intact and inhabited by a family of Invalids. Raven must recognize it too.

“Jackpot,” she says, gri

It’s less than a mile to the house, and when I see the gabled roof, covered in a fur of brown and tangled ivy, my heart leaps. The Wilds—so vast and changeable, so disorienting—also make us lust for the familiar.

I burst out to Julian, “We stopped here last autumn. During the journey south from Portland. I remember that broken window—see how they’ve patched it with wood? And the little stone chimney peeking up over the ivy.”

I notice, though, that the house is more run-down than it was even six short months ago. Its stone facade is darker, coated with a slick surface of black mold that has webbed itself into the caulking. The small clearing around the house, where last year we pitched our tents, is overgrown with high brown grasses and thorned plants.

There is no smoke piping from the chimney. It must be cold inside the house with no fire going. Last autumn the kids ran out to intercept us when we were halfway to the front door. They were always outside, laughing and shouting, teasing one another. Now there is quiet and stillness, except the wind through the ivy, a slow sigh.

I begin to feel uneasy. The others must feel it too. We’ve covered the last mile quickly, moving together as one large group, buoyed by the promise of a real meal, an indoor space, a chance to feel like humans. But now everyone falls silent.

Raven reaches the door first. She hesitates with a fist raised; then she knocks. The sound is hollow and overloud in the stillness. Nothing happens.

“Maybe they’re out gathering,” I say. I’m trying to quell the panic that is building, the spiky sense of fear I used to get whenever I ran past the graveyard in Portland. Better go fast,Hana used to say, or they’ll reach out and grab your ankles.

Raven doesn’t answer. She puts her hand on the knob and turns. The door opens.

She turns to Tack. He unslings his rifle and passes in front of her into the house. Raven seems relieved that he has taken the lead. She removes a knife from the belt she wears on her hips and follows him inside. The rest of us flow in after them.

It smells terrible. A little light penetrates the darkness, spilling in from the open door and piercing the wooden slats that cover the broken window. We can just see the bare outlines of the furniture, much of it smashed or overturned. Someone lets out a cry.

“What happened?” I whisper. Julian finds my hand in the darkness and squeezes. Nobody answers. Tack and Raven move farther into the room, their shoes crunching on broken glass. Tack takes the butt of his rifle and slams it, hard, against the wooden slats in the window; they break apart easily, and more light flows into the room.

No wonder it smells so bad; there is food, rotted, spilling out of an overturned copper pot. When I take a step forward, insects scurry into the corners. I fight down a surge of nausea.

“God,” Julian mutters.

“I’ll check the upstairs,” Tack says, at normal volume, which makes me jump. Someone clicks on a flashlight, and the beam sweeps over the littered floor. Then I remember that I, too, have a flashlight, and I fumble in my backpack for it.

I move with Julian into the kitchen, keeping the flashlight in front of me, rigid, as though it will protect us. There are more signs of struggle here—a few smashed glass jars, more insects and rotting food. I draw my sleeve up to my nose and breathe through it. I pass the beam of light over the pantry shelves. They are still fairly well-stocked: jars of pickled vegetables and meats are lined neatly next to bundles of dried jerky. The jars are labeled with neat, handwritten script that identifies their contents, and I feel a sudden vertigo, a wild swinging, as I remember a woman with fire-red hair, bending over a jar with her pen, smiling, saying, There’s hardly any paper left at all. Soon we’ll have to guess at what’s what.

“Clear,” Tack a

“Scavengers again?” Gordo asks gruffly.

Tack passes a hand through his hair.

“They weren’t looking for food or supplies,” I say. “The pantry’s still stocked.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Scavengers at all,” Bram says. “Maybe the family just took off.”

“What? And trashed the place before they split?” Tack toes a metal cup. “And left their food behind?”

“Maybe they were in a hurry,” Bram insists. But I can tell even he doesn’t believe it; the atmosphere in the house is rancid, wrong. This is a house where something very bad has happened, and all of us can feel it.

I move toward the open door and step out onto the porch, inhaling clean, outside smells, scents of space and growth. I wish we’d never come.

Half the group has already retreated outside. Dani is moving across the yard slowly, parting the grasses with a hand—looking for what, I don’t know—as though she is wading through knee-high water. From the back of the house I hear shouted conversation; then Raven’s voice, rising above the noise. “Get back, get back. Don’t go down there. I said, don’t go down there.”

My stomach tightens. She found something.

She comes around the side of the house, breathless. Her eyes are shiny, bright with anger.

But all she says is, “I found them.” She doesn’t have to say that they’re dead.

“Where?” I croak.

“Bottom of the hill,” she says shortly, then she pushes past me, back into the house. I don’t want to return inside, to the smell and the darkness and the fine layering of death that covers everything—that’s what it is, that wrong-thing, that evil silence—but I do.

“What did you find?” Tack asks. He’s still standing in the middle of the room. Everyone else surrounds him in a semicircle, frozen, quiet, and for a moment, when I reenter the room, I have the impression of statues, gripped in gray light.

“Evidence of a fire,” Raven says, and then adds, a little more quietly, “Bone.”

“I knew it.” Coral’s voice sounds high and slightly hysterical. “They were here. I knewit.”

“They’re gone now,” Raven says soothingly. “They won’t be back.”

“It wasn’t Scavengers.”

All of us whip around. Alex is standing in the doorway. Something red—a ribbon, or strip of fabric—is balled loosely in his fist.

“I told you not to go down there,” Raven says. She is glaring at him—but beneath the anger, I see fear as well.

He ignores her and passes into the room, shaking out the fabric as he does, holding it up for us to see: It’s a long strip of red plastic tape. At intervals it is imprinted with an image of a skull and crossbones, and the words CAUTION: BIOHAZARD.