Midge stumbled forward a few steps, and felt the knife press against her chest, over her heart.
“Andrea!” the thin girl gasped.
“Sorry,” the heavier girl murmured. Her voice cracked. “We really need a hostage. There has to be some way to get out of here. If they break the chains-”
Midge could smell the girl. Traces of sweat, of blood, but sweeter smells too, like fruit, in the girl’s hair.
Mam got the first pick of every meal. She had the babies to feed. By the time everyone else had eaten, there wasn’t much for Midge.
Her stomach rumbled.
She ignored the knife, leaning in close, and bit into Andrea’s collarbone.
The knife penetrated her chest. She barely felt the pain, in the midst of the exultation. The joy of food. Of warm food. Meat.
Her hands gripped the girl’s upper arms, and squeezed. She felt the individual parts snap and break. With each struggle, every jerk or shove, she didn’t lose her grip, be it tooth or finger, but reaffirmed it. Her jaws locked, like the junkyard dogs in Mal’s scrap heap, or the weasels that scurried in the woods.
The boy on the one side and the girl on the other grabbed her, hit her, screamed in mutual stark terror, but they didn’t dislodge her.
It took Mam to dislodge her, hauling her away from the food with enough force that the bit of bone she was gripping with her teeth broke. The screams of the three renewed.
“I told him,” Mam spat the words, red in the face, every few words punctuated by a shake that made Midge’s brain go all woozy. “I told your Pa, you’re wrong somehow. Now you’ve gone and ruined our dinner. How do you make sausage when the blood’s all over the danged bedroom floor?”
Midge was frozen in fear.
“He’ll listen now,” Mam said. “Treat you like Mal’s bitches, we will. Lock you away.”
Midge didn’t, couldn’t resist as her mother hauled her outside.
Her Pa couldn’t resist either.
“Ah, my ‘skeeter,” her father said, almost mournfully, as he saw the pair approach. “What have you done this time?”
Midge didn’t know what to say or do.
It was two minutes before she was shoved into the storehouse. The shack. The door was shut and barred.
Put away with all the other broken and discarded things. Many were things taken from people who took a few too many wrong turns, like Shawn and Andrea and the other girl.
There were no windows. It was okay. She was good at seeing in the dark.
She pulled the knife out of her chest, and tossed it aside, sitting down in the corner with a hand over the wound, waiting.
The dullness of it was the second worst part.
She counted things, like Mal had told her, sticking to the things that could be counted with fingers and toes. She moved piles aside. She told herself stories in her head, spinning variations of stories her Mam had told her when she was smaller and they hadn’t yet known she was odd. Mostly mute and big for her age.
But the hunger was the worst part of all.
She caught the bugs and scarfed them down before they could crawl through her fingers. She chewed on an old leather boot until it was soft and tore the soft bits and ate them.
There were rats, too. Best of all.
She learned where to hunt them, crawling further back into the shack, moving things so they’d move in certain directions or get cornered, or have things fall on them.
She crawled further back and further back still.
Until she found her way out.
The grass was grayer and the trees didn’t have leaves. The sky was black, and a heavy mist hung over everything.
It was cold, but the cold didn’t bother her.
Bugs bit her, but she was used to that.
The ground broke away underfoot, like ice over ice water, except it was only sludge beneath, but she was strong, and she could keep moving forward until it was solid again.
She found the quiet little town, the place where it was almost easier to live outdoors than to risk going inside. Bad things lurked here. Some big, some smart.
She settled in, living on the fringes at first.
Not much different than life had been before. It wasn’t much of a journey from there to here. Here, she ate rats too.
And when people came along, more than one, she hid.
When a person, just one, came along, she followed. She waited until they were asleep, she snuck up on them, and she broke them. She ate her fill each and every time.
The first time she saw a Pa and a Mam was the first time she went after people when there were more than one. She ate her fill then, too.
Her days were punctuated by hunting, scavenging, waiting, sleeping, and eating.
She stopped caring if they were asleep. She stopped caring if they were alone, if there were three, or if there were eight. They ran when they saw her anyway.
The door to the shack opened.
Her instincts were honed. Even in the bewilderment of being home again, she didn’t waste a heartbeat.
Stranger? Attack.
She lunged, catching the man by the head in both hands. Easy, when his head was only as high as her shoulders were.
She took off his head like she’d taken her doll’s.
She hurled it at the next man, and knocked him off his feet.
Grabbing the headless body with both hands, she hurled it at the third man.
She didn’t get much farther than that. There were others, and they were guarded by dogs. The dogs spoke like men spoke, and the men spoke like the priest Mal had taken her to meet when she had first learned to walk, their voices a drone and a song and even posher than posh. Proper, careful, old words.
She saw her Pa. He was standing in a circle that had been drawn on the ground, head bowed. He had more scars, and more gray hair, and his lips were thinner. He was old. He wore only overalls, no shirt, and held a tree saw in each hand. There was blood on the blades.
Mam’s body was on the ground not far from him, headless, thrown into a pile with all the others. Even Biff and Jory, who were almost halfway to being adults.
Stopped with words and dogs and circles.
But their words couldn’t stop her, and it was funny that the men seemed to think they should. She killed two more before they thought to actually attack her.
She was strong. She didn’t even slow down as they stuck one spear through her stomach or a sword through her arm. She shoved one into the side of the house with enough strength to put a hole in the wall and a lot of holes in the man, from bits of house.
But, in the end, they got her. She kneeled as the burdens their words put on her shoulder grew to be too much. She watched through glaring eyes as they painted a circle around her.
“You’ll say the words,” one of the strangers told her.
She didn’t disagree. What did it matter? She said the words. She agreed to the deal, whatever it was.
“You’ll come when you’re called,” the stranger said, his voice tight. Upset about the people he’d lost. “Midge, I hereby banish you. Hear my words…”
“Midge?” her father rasped the words. “My ‘skeeter.”
She didn’t respond. She only took a moment to shut her eyes and feel the cool air on her skin, to smell a place that was alive, not forever dying. Before she opened her eyes again, she was banished. Back to the place at the rear of the shack, with people to hunt and food to eat.