Lynn considered the proposal. It was a good one. As much as she didn’t want to stay here with Richard’s body on a stretcher, she’d be staying somewhere else with that same body just a few hours later anyway. It made more sense to start their return journey well rested in the morning. “Okay. Solid plan. We’ll spend the night here.”
Dani smiled all the way to her eyes. “Good. Thanks. You won’t have to worry about anything, okay? Food and things, I’ve got it handled.”
“Thanks.” Lynn doubted she’d be interested in food the rest of the day, but there was no use in saying so. There was also very little reason to postpone the inevitable any longer: she was only getting more anxious as she sat. She scraped the tin clean, sucked the last of the oatmeal off her spoon, and popped a slice of pear into her mouth. “I’m going to get started.”
The sparkle in Dani’s eyes died. She tensed and stood when Lynn did, then fidgeted with the hem of her sweater. “Good luck.”
Lynn nodded. I’ll need it. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Dani’s neck for a quick hug to remind herself why she was doing this. Before Dani could respond, she’d already let go. “Thanks.”
Two weeks was long enough for the chunks of grass Lynn had placed over the gravesite to start knitting together again. They broke apart when she pushed the boulder off. All her life, she had been taught death was the enemy. The dead carried diseases that could kill you. Every inch of skin, except for her eyes, was covered. She’d even wrapped cloth around the area where her pants met her boots so nothing could seep into them. She wore two pants and two shirts over each other; her hair was wrapped up in another shirt, and she’d tied a strip of cloth around her nose and mouth. She even had her winter mittens on, tied around her wrist with string. It would make holding the shovel a little more challenging, but the added protection was worth any discomfort.
Lynn grabbed the shovel and examined it, buying herself a few more seconds of respite. This tool had probably aided in the burial of a lot of people—it had belonged to the thieving family, after all—but had it ever dug up anyone? Disturbing the grave felt sacrilegious, but she reminded herself she was committed to doing it. So she started. She didn’t bother preserving the slabs of grass as she had when she’d buried him. He wasn’t going back in; no one was. She scooped the grass up along with the soil and tried to get her mind to go numb.
With her extra layers of clothing, she was soon sweating profusely and panting. Re-opening a grave was certainly less work than cutting it fresh out of the soil, but it wasn’t easier. Not long after she’d started, the sand became infested with maggots. Her insides coiled at the sight of the writhing white worms, then she steeled herself and pressed on. This was nothing, just a prelude.
Under the canopy, she couldn’t tell the sun’s path. She didn’t know how much time passed, but when the shovel hit straining skin, she realized either hours had gone by or she’d buried him shallower than she remembered. A rush of gas puffed up, and no amount of layering could protect her from the stench of rot and putrefaction. Lynn gagged. She tried to weather the assault on her nose, but it was useless; she had to get out of the grave.
She tossed the shovel aside and pressed her elbow over her mouth and nose. The scent of apple from her breakfast made everything worse.
Every inhale sent a warning through her system. Her body and mind screamed at her to get away from the corpse, but instead, she lowered herself down and cleared the dirt off the body with her mitten-covered hands. Icy streams of sweat slid down her back—a mixture of heat, exertion, and sheer miserableness. She ignored it—ignored everything but the scoops of wiggling earth she gathered and placed onto the grass next to the grave. Gather, lift up, gather, lift up, gather, lift up. Every now and again, a few white little bodies toppled back into the grave from the edge and she had to scoop them up again.
Eventually, she stood and balanced precariously over a bloated leg. For the first time, she allowed herself to take in the now fully exposed corpse. Richard looked worse than she had assumed. Where his skin had torn, his flesh had become infested with worms, ants, maggots, and everything else that fed off scavenged meat. His crawling skin made Lynn’s crawl sympathetically.
She knew she couldn’t give herself time to think about the next step. If the realization of what she would have to do sank in, she wouldn’t be able to do it. Instead, she pulled the edge of her rags more securely over her nose to dampen the smell and clambered out of the hole. She kicked the writhing pile of sand farther to the side to make room for the blanket she’d brought and, once done, shook her boot pathetically to get the sand and maggots off. As she climbed into the hip-high grave again, she tried to avoid stepping into the juices that seeped from the disturbed body.
How am I going to do this? The man outweighed her, and the grave was deep. She would have to get the body into a seated position, and that meant full-body contact was unavoidable. Her hair stood on end. Don’t think about it, just do it. Do it!
She held her breath, bent down, and hesitated only a moment before she pushed through her revulsion and grabbed the sleeves of his once-white shirt. Pulling the arms up, she walked forward until her boots sank into the wet dirt by his waist. She inhaled once, as shallowly as she could, and grabbed the shirt just below Richard’s clavicles. With a heave that pulled the muscles in her arms taut, she yanked up as she stepped back.
He bent with her and then toppled forward, against her legs, once he passed the tipping point.
She stumbled. For a disgustingly terrifying moment, the dead, rotting weight threatened to push her off-balance. The back of her legs hit the wall of the grave before she could fall over. Richard’s head lolled against her thigh.
Her first instinct was to shove him away, but then he would fall back and she would have to do it all over again, so she fought the urge and carefully stepped aside.
He slumped forward even more, and with effort, Lynn freed her legs. She hurried out of the grave and did a jerky little dance out of sheer disgust, sending maggots and ants flying. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Flapping her arms around wildly, she beat at her clothes until she couldn’t see any more bugs. She still felt them, crawling everywhere.
“Gah!” She clenched her hands to fists and squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds. She wanted to cry. There was no way she could go back into that grave and touch him again—but she had to. Thankfully, she could postpone the inevitable.
She picked up the shovel again and broke the side of the grave opposite Richard’s slumped body down to a ramp. Then she tied a rope around a tree and steeled herself before she went down again. The stench instantly overwhelmed her again, and her nausea flared anew. She pushed the bile down and forced herself to see Richard as a package, not a human being. It made it easier to reach under his armpits and tie a rope around his torso. Once she was sure he was secured and the knots would hold, she gratefully clambered back out, wiped bugs from her arms and torso, and got to hoisting.
She sat and planted both feet against the trunk of the tree she’d looped the rope around, then used it to anchor herself to her spot as she pulled the package up the slope. Hand over hand, she pulled the rope around the tree and the package up with it.
It was heavy work. Her muscles didn’t get a reprieve: if she let go of the rope, Richard’s body slid partway down the ramp. She’d have to cover that distance again, and she didn’t trust her arms to hold out for much longer. Finally, the resistance stopped and Lynn checked behind her to see Richard’s body entirely freed from the grave. She let go of the rope and fell back onto the grass, too tired to care that she might be lying on bugs.