“The buggy broke down,” one of the men tells Vanya. “Had to carry it ourselves.”
“Just get this garbage out back where it belongs. And if I ever see you two trying something like this again, it’ll be you rolled up in plastic.” Vanya kicks the load violently and strides away, the men watching her go.
“Hormonal or what,” one whispers. The other snickers. As they reach down for their bundle, Silas pulls on my elbow. “We have to follow them,” he says.
“What for?”
“Do you want to guess what’s in that plastic or shall I?” he asks.
“What about Quinn?” We need to make sure he’s okay, and find out what’s happened to Bea.
“What if that is Quinn?” Silas asks. I stare at the bundle. If Silas is right, then it doesn’t matter what Abel says; we can’t stay one more day.
“You don’t think that,” I say.
“He wasn’t at dinner.”
“Let’s check it out.”
We follow the men at a distance, stooping low and sticking as close to the outbuildings as we can. They chat, back and forth, and groan under the weight of the load. “Should’ve waited ’til tomorrow,” the one says.
“Best get it over with.” Eventually we reach the back wall marking Sequoia’s border. Like the front, the top is garnished with broken glass. With a sigh, the two men drop the bundle and stand huffing and puffing. “Need air,” one says, coughing.
“Too right. Soon as we’re done with this, I’m gonna set up camp next to an oxybox.” He roots in his pocket and pulls out a heavy, jangling set of keys, which he inspects in the moonlight. “Got it,” he says, and shuffles to the wall with a tiny steel door built into it. He rattles the key in the lock, and the door opens.
The two men let out long breaths as they bend down to retrieve the bundle, and once they have it, they scoot through the door, one walking backward, the other directing from the opposite end.
We spring at the door as quickly as we can, glance around it to make sure the men have moved on, and creep out of Sequoia.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Quick,” Silas whispers.
The men are already way ahead, plodding along the uneven ground and sidestepping heaps of junk abandoned on this side of the wall, where no one has to see it. The moon disappears again, which is fortunate, because there are no buildings to hide behind, only the odd boulder or rusting car, and if the men were to turn, they’d surely see us.
They stop for the final time, and we drop behind an upended, rotting wooden table. Silas nudges me. I lift myself up beside him. There is another figure next to the two men now: a scrawny man with a long beard and wearing a facemask. “The hole doesn’t look big enough,” one of the men complains.
“Gimme a look,” the bearded man grumbles, and knocks the bundle with the handle of a shovel. The men let it drop to the ground and unwrap it.
I lift myself higher to see, sprawled on the ground before us, lifeless and stiff, the body of a man. His head is swollen and his eyes are bulging. I slide back down behind the table and cover the blowoff valve in my mask with my hand.
Silas’s eyes reflect a sliver of light. “Not Quinn,” he whispers, which makes me feel a little better, but not much.
“He’s too wide,” the bearded man says. The shovel hits the ground as he digs a bigger hole. “I’ve another spade over there,” he says.
“You do your job, Crab, we’ll do ours.”
There’s a pause and one of the men speaks again. “Hungry?” he asks the other. We hear something being unwrapped and slobbery chewing. I gag. How can they bury someone and eat at the same time?
And that’s when I notice the ground: it isn’t naturally uneven—it’s become that way from the bodies buried here. And though some mounds have already been concealed by rocks and debris, and are almost flat, others are still plump, the earth barely sunken in next to the body.
I poke Silas. “Graves everywhere,” I whisper.
“Who the hell are they burying?” he says. We stare at each other, not knowing what else to say.
“There you are,” Crab says. We peek over the edge of the table and watch Crab throw his shovel onto the ground.
The two men who carried the body throw aside what remains of their food and stand. “You take that end,” one tells the other.
“Why should I touch the head?” his workmate barks.
“He won’t bite.”
“You take the head then,” he says, and the other man is forced to swap ends.
“One, two, three,” he says, grimacing, and they lift the man by his arms and legs, swing the body, and launch him into the hole where he lands with a crack.
Crab twirls the end of his beard around his finger. “Shall I fill it in?” he asks, nodding at the grave.
“Well, we don’t want it stinking.”
“Doesn’t seem much point if you’re gonna have another delivery for me any day.” Crab picks up his shovel and sticks it into the heap of loose earth.
“Not your place to keep track of these things, Crab,” one of the men says. Crab snorts and covers the dead man with earth. The two deliverymen head back.
“We should’ve run from Sequoia ages ago,” Silas whispers.
“The back gate gives us an escape route. We didn’t know about it until now.”
Silas rubs his head with both hands. The two men are out of sight. If we want to catch them and make it through the door before them, we have to run.
We pick our way through the junk, veering to the right to bypass the men. It’s so dark it’s difficult to see where we’re going, and we’re sprinting so fast, I stumble several times and my boots clank against old metal pipes. Finally the wall appears, and we slam against it, almost knocking ourselves out. I use my hands to feel for the open door. Silas points at it about fifty feet away, but we’re too late. The men saunter out of the scrub and seconds later slip though the door, slamming it behind them. We run and I try the handle. “Locked. We’ll have to climb over the wall,” I say.
“I’m not sure it’s possible,” Silas says, and I’m about to argue when there’s a bang and he crumples to the ground.
I scream and jump just in time to dodge the gravedigger who is aiming his shovel directly for my head.
“Drifters!” Crab yells, grappling for my facemask. I kick him in the chest with both feet and knock him to the ground, giving me a few seconds to grab his facemask. I pull it so hard the tubing comes away from the airtank, and he lashes out. But he isn’t as adept at breathing as the others, and after a few seconds he stops fighting, hacking instead, as the sinewy atmosphere attacks his lungs.
“Give me my mask, you dirty br-brat,” he sputters.
I dash to Silas, refit his facemask, and shake him violently. “Wake up.” I lift his head to see if he’s been injured, but I can’t see much in the dark, and suddenly there’s a rustle behind me and my own facemask is pulled off. I jump up and turn, and as I do, Crab, who looked done for only moments before, puts his hands around my throat. His eyes bulge as he squeezes.
Neither of us has enough air, and together we crumple to the ground.
His hands are clamped so firmly there’s no way he’s letting go. It feels like he might snap my neck. I dig my nails into his hands and scratch his face, fighting, fighting for life. And then a shadow appears above us.
Silas.
Crab releases me and tries to scurry away but Silas has the shovel. Crab covers his eyes with his hands, as though this will protect him, and Silas smacks the shovel against Crab’s head. Crab doesn’t utter another sound and drops to the ground. I shudder and stare at Silas.