The man just stood there.
She was smelling the pig roasted on the fire, the bubbling seams of fat and well-marbled slabs of meat that dripped a tantalizing hot juice into the flames. She was waiting for the man to pluck the carcass free and begin eating. Perhaps he would render it to bone and pack the meat off with him.
No.
He did neither.
He went down on his knees in the grass, shaking. Kylie was confused. For surely this was his kill, slit and spitted, he had drawn first blood and would be the first to taste the sweet bounty of the hunt. But he did not seize it and claim it as his own.
Kylie waited.
She could smell the pungent odors wafting up from her body… leaves and loam and black earth, a telltale stink of musk and animal oils that just barely masked her own ripe body odor. Good earthy smells. Smells that did not confuse, but invigorated and gave confidence. She ran fingers over the ceremonial welts and upraised scars of citricization that mottled her flesh. Like the paint made of blood and marrow fat that she decorated her body with, these were the symbols of who she was, what she was, her tribal affiliation.
She sniffed her fingers, tasted them, intrigued by her own odors and flavors.
She touched fingers to her armpits, her vagina, her rectum. Each smell and flavor was more heady and organic, each one making her more giddy.
The man moved.
He had heard something. Kylie was certain of it for the smell coming from him across the yard had changed. This was sharper: fear. Yes, he heard something. A voice. Weapons in hand, he was going to investigate.
Kylie, peering through the bushes with eyes like glittering black stones, tensed in the dappled moonlight. Her muscles were drawn tight. She could smell violence coming from the man. It made her loins tremble.
Deep inside the dark chest of her mind, biochemical signals had been activated and Kylie knew instinctively that the zenith of the cycle was fast approaching. She could smell it on herself. Taste it on her skin. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would be in estrus—heat—and already she was aching for the filling and the release. She hoped the dam would give her the man. She would bait him with the scent of her womanhood, draw him in, let him spill his milk into her. Then the cycle would be complete.
A voice had spoken to the man.
Kylie did not like the voice. She could tell by its tone that its speaker was not like she, not a hunter but prey. Something to harvest with the rest. The breeze brought her his smell and it was perfume and soap and synthetic fibers, only a ghost of sweat and animal purity.
It was time.
Kylie went back to join her sister and the dam. They had found a bucket filled with white fireplace ashes. They had dumped water into it, mixed it into a smooth white paint. She watched them cover themselves in it. She did the same. The three of them looked like marble-white ghosts. When it was dry, the dam took red lipstick and painted her daughters. She colored both ears red and then drew a wide red band from ear to ear and filled it in so that their eyes were looking out from a belt of bright scarlet. She painted similar bands over their mouths stretching to both jawlines.
When they were done, it was time.
Clutching her spear, Kylie led them on the hunt…
69
“Nice job, Louis,” the voice said to him. “Very nice, scaring off those little savages. Commendable. One might think you were a savage yourself.”
Earl Gould.
Louis went over to him in the grass. “What the hell are you doing here, Earl?”
“I was kidnapped by the little horrors.”
He was tied-up in the grass. Louis cut him loose, wondering if it was such a good idea or not. “I’m telling you right now, Earl. I’ve been through the shit, okay? You try and attack me and I swear to God I’ll kick your fucking ass.”
Rubbing his wrists, Earl managed a laugh. “I’m okay, Louis. How about you?”
Louis didn’t bother answering that. What could he say? He had a bloody hammer and a bloody knife in his hand.
“Thanks for getting me out of this… jam,” Earl said. “I was next on the barbi. Nice show of aggression, by the way. You scared the hell out of them.”
“I thought they’d stand and fight.”
Earl shook his head. “Most animals rarely do. When faced with life-threatening show of aggression even a grizzly bear will think twice.”
“We’re in a hell of a situation here, Earl.”
“Yes, we are, Louis. We are in the jungle,” Earl said. “This is where seventy million years of primate development has led us: right back to the beginning.”
Louis led him into the house and made him sit in a recliner in the living room. He did not turn on any lights. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, drank a few handfuls of water. When he came out, he grabbed a poker from the fireplace and sat on the couch. He could see Earl just fine in the moonlight filtering in through the picture window. He was grinning, but it was an awful sort of grin. A mad grin, but hardly dangerous. Just the grin of a man who had parted the black velour curtains of reality and peered deep into the fires of Hell, maybe saw something looking back at him. Something he recognized.
An ex college prof, Earl dressed very neatly, was always well-groomed and on the ball. But today, all that was gone. His white hair was mussed, his clothes dirty and unkempt. There were bruises on his face and a smear of blood at one cheek. He kept taking off his glasses, cleaning them on his shirt. Putting then back on and repeating the process.
“Okay, Earl,” Louis said, his voice very weary. “Tell me about it. Tell me what you did.”
Earl just kept grinning. His eyes were wet in the darkness. “I… I killed, Louis. I killed Maureen.”
There should have been some shock, but there was nothing. Had he told Louis that he bought a new Weed-Eater, the reaction would have been about the same. “Are you sure?”
“I hit her.”
“I saw that.”
“But you ran off, Louis! You ran off!”
“I had to, Earl.”
Although Louis could not see his eyes, he could just about gauge the pain in them. But he figured there was more than pain. Probably recrimination.
“But you let me hit her, Louis.”
“No, Earl, I didn’t let you do anything. I didn’t have time to stop you. Somebody was attacking Macy. I couldn’t help you.” Louis sat there, looking at him. “You hit her, Earl. You hurt her. Not me. You. You’re the one that let that fucking madness take you over.”
Earl sat right up and walked over to Louis like he was going to attack him. “I didn’t have a choice!” He grabbed Louis by the shirt, shook him. “I couldn’t fight against it! You can’t fight against it! It just takes you and you belong to it and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it! Do you see? That’s why I hit her and that’s why I kept hitting her!”
Louis slapped him across the face. Slapped him hard enough to snap his head back and he wanted to keep slapping him. He was just sick of it all. Sick of the shit his neighbors had been doing to each other, to themselves, to the whole goddamn town. He didn’t know why the madness had not gotten to him, but he was starting to think that everyone who was infected was weak. Goddamn fucking weak. So he slapped the old man and he wanted to keep slapping until his hand was red and numb and Earl was on the floor, bleeding and sobbing and pissing himself. To Louis, the old man was the embodiment of all of them. Their weakness. Their inhumanity.