He watched as she wandered away without seeing him, carefully never looking to her left. Finally he turned away to renew his watch on the bone pile. He thought about Julie again. He no longer felt guilty, not even a little.
He only saw one other Reject from his perch that day. An older boy, maybe twelve, who looked familiar somehow. His right leg had been moved about a half foot further up the side of his body. And while the boy still walked upright, it seemed to cause him some pain. By nightfall Spencer was beginning to think that he would have to wait another day for his plan and was getting ready to climb down from the branch. But just after the last rays of the sun faded to black he saw movement from Nanny Gurdy’s house.
A form was coming out of the exterior basement door in the back of the house, moving in and out of view as it rounded the tall hedges that hid the bone pile from the house. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, but the shadowy figure was round and walked on two legs and was clearly an adult. Nanny maybe, dragging something heavy behind her.
Spencer climbed down two branches then jumped to the ground, falling hard onto legs that were too cramped to hold him. He fought quickly back to his feet, hiding his blanket/pack under some dead wood and securing the fork and telescope in his waistband. Ignoring the pins and needles pain of his legs he started running as best he could to the bone pile. He had to time it just right. Had to get there after Nanny was gone, but had to be there and gone himself with the prize before the Rejected caught wind of the meal.
Making the distance to the bone pile in record time, he ran to the end furthest from the woods. There was a sickly sweet smell rising from the bones, but surprisingly not an overpowering one. Only a faint miasma in the area to let you know how many bodies lied below. No meat left on the bones meant nothing to decay but the bones themselves.
The moon shone white off of those pale bones, but there was no need to make a pretense at stealth. It was still dark enough to hide practically in plain site. He only hoped that nobody was hidden and waiting for him nearby. This very darkness cost him precious moments finding the new corpse. Finally discovering it on the other end of the pile, he tried not to think about what he was doing as he grabbed it. Thought he could avoid looking directly at the body, but was wrong.
A boy, probably. About the same age as Spencer. He had dreaded the thought of mutilating the body to complete the plan, of smashing the face to a pulp with a rock. But to his further horror he saw he didn’t need to. The face was gone, as were some of the other soft tissues. In the moonlight it looked very much as if they had been torn off, or even chewed off. Was this done in Smiling Jack’s lab? It didn’t look like the clean cut of a scalpel.
Something half eats these kids even before the Rejected Things get their taste, he thought with a shiver. For some reason it made him think of the fairy tale of the gingerbread house, but there was not time to dwell on it. He picked the body up as best he could under the arms, ready to drag it away.
Got to hurry, got to get out of here before…
But it was already too late.
They had already come from the forest, were already moving towards the bone pile. They could see him, he knew they could. Even in the dark it would be impossible for them not to by now. At least twenty of them, shambling towards him in some form or another. They didn’t have him surrounded yet, he could still run for it, but he couldn’t take the body with him. He felt like he was trapped even if he wasn’t. He had to convince them to let him take the body this one time.
As they closed in and he began to speak, some small part of his mind tried to tell him that he was just jumping off a cliff to escape from a tiger. But his reason was gone, panic had a hold of him.
“Wait a minute,” he said to none of them and all of them as they formed a circle. “Just wait, I need just this one. If you let me have just this one I promise I won’t take anymore. Really I promise.”
Most advanced slowly, but all advanced. Boldest of all was the one he had seen earlier, the older kid with the bad leg. He frowned down upon Spencer with a bully’s glare. All in a flash Spencer realized why he looked familiar. It was Marcus, the oldest kid from Spencer’s original group. He wanted to say something but was speechless with the surprise of recognition. He felt a moments twinge of relief, and was entirely unprepared for the backhand strike that caught him across the face and sent him sprawling.
On instinct he rolled to his feet while still moving, seeing from the corner of his eye the brief surge of the crowd towards him. He tried to look everywhere at once while at the same time maneuvering out of reach of the large Marcus-creature that still advanced on him. Spencer pulled the fork from his waistband, brandishing it as a knife. The bully paused at this, but did not stop. Only advancing more cautiously on Spencer.
Spencer made a stab at the bully, but it was ill timed and barely scratched at him. The bully used his longer reach to counter with a blow to Spencer’s face. One which he partially blocked with his left hand, getting knocked back but careful not to fall. Sensing his back was almost to the wall of creatures behind him, he quickly followed it up by dodging to the right.
The bully spun to follow him and stumbled on his bad leg, not quite falling. Spencer didn’t need to think about it, it was only instinct to spring upon this obvious weakness. He moved around to his right again, sidestepping crablike. Marcus couldn’t keep up and Spencer was behind him in a flash, kicking at the back of the knee on the good leg just as the bully was twisting it to follow Spencer. The other leg couldn’t hold his weight and he went down with a yelp of pain.
Spencer hesitated. It was less than a second, but it seemed as if in that moment everything slowed down and he could think with crystal clarity. This guy was down, attacking him now just wasn’t right.
It’s not honorable, he thought. But the moment he thought the word, it just seemed so childish.
He stabbed down with the fork, into the small of the once-kid now-creature’s back. It cried out in pain, but even under Spencer’s weight the fork only dug in a tiny bit. Not enough to kill even with a thousand hits. Only enough to make the thing mad.
The bully started to get up and Spencer got ready to stab again, but he didn’t get the chance. Something knocked him aside and he found himself amidst a crush of bodies, things pressing in on him that were terrible and unnatural to the touch.
When he fought free he saw that the crowd had surged in on the fallen monster. They had pounced on his weakness and now were tearing him apart, eating him alive. His screams were muffled, but still terrible to hear.
Spencer saw he was being ignored and grabbed his original prize under the corpse’s limp dead arms again, making his way towards the forest as best he could. The sounds of unbearable pain and panic following him.
That night was the longest of his life. He dragged the body through the woods, knowing by the distant and not so distant sounds that he was being followed in the dark. The burden under his arms was heavy from the start, and grew heavier by the minute. He wanted to stop and rest but knew he couldn’t. He pushed himself in a mad rush, far beyond the point of exhaustion.
Navigation was easy, since he continually stayed within visual distance of the edge of the forest. He went south around the curve of it, then east until he was directly south of the shops. Having reached his goal he did the thing he had been dreading almost as much as the mutilation of the body he had been spared. He traded clothes with the corpse. He was tempted to just through away the corpses bloody clothes, which got even more gore on them as he undressed the body. But nights in Nowhere Blvd. were still cold, and he didn’t intend to freeze. So suppressing his revulsion he put the dead boy’s clothes on himself and his on the dead boy.