Max and Ephraim would never hike to the bluffs behind his house, staring up at the stars as the shearwaters called from the cliffs; they’d never talk about girls and candy and their dreams and who’d win in a fight, Batman or James Bond. They’d made a pact to be friends forever, but forever could be so, so brief.
Max curled into a wretched ball beside the grave. Eef was dead. Everyone was dead or missing or insane. The cabin was in splinters and things were falling apart.
Which seemed so unfair.
Where were the adults? Max couldn’t believe someone hadn’t come for them yet. His parents were always nagging him to be on time, to be responsible and to think of others. Well then, what the fuck? His folks were full of shit. Or else they’d be here. And Kent’s parents—including his hot-shit policeman dad—and Newt’s and Eef’s, too. Didn’t they give a shit about them? Maybe they were all complicit in it. A plot. They’d all bought into it. Get them out to the island and cut off their escape route. Let nature take its course.
No. That was idiot talk. Their parents would never do that. The fact that they weren’t here actually spoke to how dire the situation must be. Because this wasn’t nature, was it?
This was something else.
Those things. The way they spread infection—the way they spread.
Newton got a fire going. The warmth helped the anger and confusion melt out of Max’s brain; they were replaced by exhaustion. He felt as if he were wearing one of those heavy lead coats the dental hygienist draped over his shoulders before taking X-rays.
He lay beside the fire. Almost instantly, he was fast asleep.
40
EAT EAT EAT EAT…
Shelley rose in the dead of night to hunt.
He’d found a cool, dark place to hide. He’d limped into the woods, clutching at his hurt knee. He eventually came upon a cavern burrowed into the island’s bedrock. It was deep and narrow and it held the tang of salt. Perhaps it was fed by an aquifer that led out to sea.
He lay in the sheltering dark, listening to the water trickle on the rock. This place suited him. It would be a wonderful place to give birth.
The boys. Max and Newton. Skinny and fat. Jack Sprat and his wife. They thought he was sick. They couldn’t be more wrong.
He wasn’t sick. He was simply changing into something entirely new.
He could feel it inside of him: a vast darkness, itchy-black, unfurling like the petals of a night-blooming flower. It would hurt. Oh yes. But then change always did.
The hateful boys had wounded him. They may have hurt his babies—but no, he could feel them squirming contentedly inside of him. Thank goodness.
The boys needed to die.
Shelley had been planning on killing them, anyway. He wasn’t sure it’d be much fun at this point, although it might provide the same fleeting thrill he’d experienced while drowning Kent: a fizzy, sudsy bath-bubble feeling in his veins. But now he’d kill them as a simple matter of principle. They had harmed him, which meant—inadvertently or otherwise—they had harmed his babies. And a father always defended his children.
Shelley exited the cave. The night enveloped him. He was part of it, dark just like it.
EAT EAT EAT
Oh my, weren’t they so needy? So hungry. They asked so much of him, as all children must… but Shelley was only too happy to give.
He came upon a diseased elm. Its trunk was pocked with tiny bore holes. He tore away a chunk of bark—his strength was immense!—and clawed inside the rotted tree. When he withdrew it, his hand was teeming with woodlice. He crunched them into paste. They fidgeted on his tongue and tickled his throat when he swallowed. He giggled hoarsely while sucking the last few lice off his fingers.
GOOD GOOD EAT MORE MORE MORE
Shelley caught his reflection in a pool of moonlight-sheened water. He was horribly wrinkled. It looked as if spiders with legs of thin steel wire had battened onto his flesh, curling and tightening, trenching deep lines into his face.
His stomach was a swollen gourd. It bulged through his shirt and over the band of his trousers. Its pale circumference was strung with blue veins and sloshed with a dangerous, exciting weight…
…in the dank wastes of his brain—his undermind, you could say—a species of mute fear twined into his thoughts. This isn’t right, a voice said. You’re being eaten alive.
…a wave of acidic warmth washed through those thoughts, burning them away.
Oh, they asked so much of him! It was tiring, feeding all those hungry mouths. And the mouths just beget more mouths and more mouths and more and more and—
Shelley slid down the incline to the campsite. Firelight crept around the cabin’s shattered angles. He snuck around the far side and surveyed the fire pit. Max was sleeping. He imagined grabbing his hair and jamming him face-first into the white-hot coals. He pictured the silly boy’s face melting like a latex Halloween mask.
The fat one, Newton, was staring right at him.
His heart jogged in his chest: ba-dump. Newton sat on the far side of the fire. The flames played over his eyes, which seemed to be staring directly at him.
EAT EAT EAT EAT
In a moment, he thought. First I have to kill them. Then I’ll be alone. Then I can give birth in peace. Then we can all play.
But how would he do it? He’d lost his knife. Was Newton really looking at him?
“I see you, Shelley.”
Newton pulled a knife out of his pocket. His knife. He unfolded it carefully and stabbed the tip into a log. The knife quivered in the wood. An invitation?
“Go away. Get out of here. Now,” Newton whispered.
A cold, slippery eel ghosted through the ventricles of Shelley’s heart, cinching itself tight. He retreated like a groveling animal. He wanted them dead so badly but… but… but he was so hungry.
Shelley’s stomach swayed as he tripped sideways, whimpering softly as his belly brushed the edge of the cabin—for a moment he felt it might detach and burst like a water balloon on the forest floor. Then he’d lose everything. His children. His precious babies.
SHELLEY WAS in the forest again. Night folded over him. The hunger was hellish, unspeakable, but one must suffer for what one loves.
He shambled through the woods, eating whatever. It came to him in flashes. In one moment, he was hunched under a log devouring eggs, maybe—termite eggs whose sacs burst between his teeth like albino jelly beans…
…next he was along the shoreline ankle-deep in the freezing surf, gorging himself on the decayed carapace of some creature that had once crawled in the sea. So tasty. It slipped between his numbed fingers and he collapsed into the surf, squealing like a piglet, clutching at his stinking prize…
…later, much later, Shelley lay in the darkness with the cool trickle of the rock. He was screaming or maybe crying, he couldn’t tell. There was a watery echo down there that did funny things to his voice.
None of that really mattered anymore, anyway. His home, his foolish parents, his teachers, the many jars buried in the backyard full of his playthings, all in various states of decomposition. That was his old life; his silly, forgettable life.