Nick’s mortified reaction reaches Brian’s ears a split second before Brian can get a good look at what’s going on in the laundry room.
Brian pushes his way into the narrow enclosure and sees the dead girl eating a human hand.
Brian’s initial reaction is not one of repulsion or disgust or outrage (which, as it happens, is exactly the combination of emotions currently twisting Nick’s features as he gapes at the feeding in progress). Instead, Brian is overcome by a wave of sadness. He says nothing at first, simply looks on as his brother crouches down in front of the tiny upright corpse.
Ignoring the presence of the other men, Philip calmly pulls a severed human ear from the bucket, and waits patiently for the Penny-thing to finish consuming the hand. She gobbles the middle-aged male fingers with unbridled gusto, chewing the bloodless hairy knuckles as though they were delicacies, the stringers of pink, foamy saliva dangling from her lips.
She hardly pauses long enough to swallow before Philip places the human ear within range of her blackened teeth, offering the morsel to the child with the care and concern of a priest proffering a wafer to a communicant. The Penny-thing devours the cartilage and gristly rolls of human skin with mindless abandon.
“I’m outta here,” Nick Parsons finally manages to blurt, pivoting and storming out of the room.
Brian enters and crouches down next to his brother. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t accuse Philip of anything. Brian is drowning in sorrow right now and all he can think of saying is, “What’s going on, man?”
Philip hangs his head. “He was already dead … they were gonna burn him … found his body in a bag out behind the clinic … he died of something else … I just took a few pieces … nobody’ll notice…”
The Penny-thing finishes the ear, and starts groaning for more.
Philip feeds her a dripping, severed foot, the jagged bone exposed at the ankle like a slimy tusk of ivory.
“You think this is…?” Brian searches for words. “You think this is a good idea?”
Philip looks down at the floor as the sticky, wet noises of the feeding frenzy fill the laundry room. The girl- thing gnaws at the bone as Philip’s voice drops an octave, beginning to crack with emotion. “Think of him as an organ donor…”
“Philip—”
“I can’t let go of her, Brian … I can’t … she’s all I got.”
Brian takes a deep breath and fights his own tears. “The thing of it is … she’s not Penny anymore.”
“I know that.”
“Then why—”
“I see her and I try to remember … but I can’t … I can’t remember … I can’t remember anything but this shit storm we’re living in … and them road rats that shot her … and she’s all I got…” The pain and grief choking his voice start to thicken, hardening into something darker. “They took her from me … my whole universe … new rules now … new rules…”
Brian can’t breathe. He watches the Penny-thing gnawing on that pasty severed foot. He looks away. He can’t take it anymore. His stomach is clenched with nausea, his mouth watering. He can feel the heat rising in his gorge, and he struggles to his feet. “I have to … I can’t stay in here, Philip … I have to go.”
Whirling around, Brian stumbles out of the laundry room and gets halfway down the hall when he drops to his knees and roars vomit.
His stomach is relatively empty. What comes out of him is mostly bile. But it comes on spasms of agony. He retches and retches, the acids spattering a six-foot length of carpet between the hallway and the living room. He upchucks his guts, which instantly makes a cold sweat break out all over his body and sends him into a paroxysm of coughing. The fit goes on for endless minutes, each cough throbbing painfully in his ribs. He coughs and coughs until he finally collapses into a heap on the floor.
Fifteen feet away, in the light of a battery-powered lantern, Nick Parsons packs his knapsack. He shoves in a change of clothes, a couple of cans of beans, blankets, a flashlight, some bottled water. He searches the cluttered coffee table for something.
Brian manages to sit up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You can’t leave, man … not now.”
“Hell I can’t,” Nick says, finding his Bible under a pile of candy wrappers. He puts the Bible in the backpack. The muffled feeding noises drift down the hallway, fueling Nick’s anxiety.
“I’m begging you, Nick.”
Nick zips the knapsack shut. He doesn’t look at Brian as he says, “You don’t need me…”
“That’s not true.” Brian swallows the bitter taste of bile. “I need you now more than ever … I need your help … to keep things together.”
“Nick. Listen to me—”
“He’s too far gone, Brian.”
“Listen. I understand what you’re saying. Give him one more chance. Maybe this is like a one-time thing. Maybe … I don’t know … it’s grief. One more chance, Nick. We got a much better shot at survival if we stay together.”
For a long, agonizing moment, Nick considers all this. Then, on a weary, exasperated sigh, which seems to deflate his very spirit, he drops the knapsack.
The next day, Philip vanishes. Brian and Nick don’t even bother looking for him. They stay inside for most of the day, hardly speaking to each other, feeling like zombies themselves, moving silently from bathroom to kitchen to living room, where they sit staring out the barred window at the blustery sky, trying to come up with an answer, a way out of this downward spiral.
Around five o’clock that afternoon, they hear a strange buzzing noise coming from outside—like a cross between a chain saw and a boat motor. Worried that it might have something to do with Philip, Brian goes to the back door, listens, then pushes his way outside and takes a few steps across the cracked cement of the back porch.
The noise is louder now. In the distance, on the north side of town, a thundercloud of dust rises into the steel-gray sky. The howl of engines sputters and waxes and wanes on the breeze, and with a surge of relief, Brian realizes that it’s merely somebody maneuvering race cars around the dirt track arena. Every so often, the sound of cheers warbles and echoes on the wind.
For a moment, Brian panics. Don’t these idiots realize all this noise is going to draw every Biter within a fifty-mile radius? At the same time, though, Brian is transfixed by that buzz-saw sound drifting on the breeze. Like a wandering radio signal, it touches something sore inside him, an ache for preplague times, a series of painful memories of lazy Sunday afternoons, a good night’s sleep, walking into a goddamn grocery store and buying a fucking gallon of milk.
He goes back inside, puts his jacket on, and tells Nick he’s going for a walk.
The entrance to the racetrack borders the main drag, a high cyclone fence stretched between two brick piles. As Brian approaches, he sees drifts of trash and old tires scattered across the meager box office, which is boarded by graffiti-stained planks.
The noise rises to ear-piercing levels—the winding scream of motors and caterwauling crowds—tainted by the odors of gasoline and burning rubber. The sky is choked with a haze of dust and smoke.
Brian finds a gap in the fence, and he heads for it, when he hears a voice.
“Hey!”
He pauses, turns, and sees three men in ratty camo-fatigues coming toward him. Two of the men are in their twenties, with greasy long hair and assault rifles pinned up high against their shoulders patrol-style. The oldest of the three—a crew-cut hard-ass, his olive drab jacket buttoned up with a bullet bandolier across his chest—walks out front, obviously in command.
“Admission is forty bucks or the equivalent in trade,” says the commander.
“Admission?” Brian says, taken aback. He sees a name patch on the older man’s breast pocket: maj. gavin. Up to this point, Brian has only stolen glimpses of the vicious National Guardsman, but now, at this proximity, Brian
