“Anymore of them?”
“Not yet,” Isaac said. “I think the people in that yellow car are out. One of them got a door open.”
I walked around the cars to look and sure enough, the female who’d been sitting in the front seat was now out of the car and the two boys soon followed. “Shit.”
“Go on,” Evan said. “We’ll take care of these. Get her inside with her family.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t too keen on that part. I was pretty sure we were either going to find an empty house or something much worse. I stopped to tap on Dan’s window and asked him in a low voice, “Will you come with us? With the handgun?”
His eyes cut to the house, to Ivy, and back to me. “Shit,” he whispered, then pulled Owen’s headphones off long enough to ask him to stay with Lana and guard the car.
The little boy nodded with a solemnity that was almost painful.
When Dan joined us, gun in hand, Ivy said, “What are you doing with that?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Don’t you even think about shooting any of them. I don’t care what …” Her voice broke and she fisted her hands, trying to get control over her tears. “Don’t you dare.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and she shrugged me off. “Ivy,” I started but she held up a hand.
“I go in. I find out what’s what. If I get bit, I get bit, but he isn’t going in there with that gun, you hear me?”
Dan looked at me and I shrugged. It was Ivy’s choice, but I hated the thought of her going in there alone. “Okay,” I said finally. “We’ll wait on the porch for you. Call out if you need—”
“I won’t be needing that,” she said contemptuously and marched up the wooden steps, stopping to dig a set of keys out of her pants pocket. She knocked softly on the door and then slipped the key into the lock. “Becca?”
She disappeared inside and Dan and I waited anxiously on the porch. Evan and Jude, armed with a club and a machete, had gone to meet the woman and her two kids. I couldn’t watch them put them down, so I turned away.
“Murder banana!” the woman called. “Murder! Help?”
The two boys called out too. “Mama! Please?”
“Need you. Help me!”
The cries were plaintive, they were painful.
And they were a lie.
I knew that and I still wanted to run to them, put my arms around them and tell them it would be okay. Or tell them I was sorry this happened to them.
I did neither, and I pretended not to hear the noises as Evan and Jude took care of them.
“Ivy?” I called after a bit of time. When I didn’t hear anything, I took a cautious step inside, Dan following close behind. The trailer smelled like a cat or two lived there and there was a scatter of shoes by the front door. Toys littered the living room to my left and on my right, dishes sat on the kitchen table, food still on the plates as if dinner had been interrupted. Flies buzzed around a bowl of what looked like potato salad. “Ivy?”
Still no answer. Poky cone held out in front of me, I walked through the living room, Dan covering my back. There was a long hallway that had doors feeding off it to the left. I checked the first room—empty. Second was the same. Then there was the bathroom, also empty, and finally a bedroom that took up the whole back end of the trailer.
Ivy sat in a chair by the bed, her head in her hands.
Her daughter lay on the bed with her two children.
They were all dead, apparently by suicide.
I must have made some noise because Ivy looked up, face bleak. “Why would she do this? She was fine two days ago. I don’t understand …”
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
And then I did.
The littlest one had a bite on his forearm, black streaks of infection snaking up his arm.
I covered my mouth with my hand and desperately tried not to picture Jackson or Tucker or my parents having to make a similar choice.
Tried not to picture having to make that choice myself.
Tried. But failed.
24
Then
“Ivy, we should—”
“I’m not leaving them. Not like this. Not without a burial or something.” Her eyes were trained on the bed, though she avoided looking higher than their torsos. Blood spattered the pillows and the wall behind them. “Maybe I can use some of our gas to burn the place down.”
Dan made a noise of dissent. “We can’t waste gas on—”
“It ain’t a waste!” she shouted, rising from the seat with her hands fisted at her sides. “It ain’t a fucking waste.”
“All I was going to say—”
“Get out. Get the fuck out! Now!”
I turned and put a hand on Dan’s chest. In a whisper, I said, “Let me talk to her. You go on.”
He nodded, though his jaw was tight. He disappeared down the hall and I turned back to Ivy.
“It’s not a waste, you’re right. I think, though, we can find something to use in here that would work just as well. Nail polish remover? Would she have some?”
Ivy stared at me, uncomprehendingly, then nodded. Like a robot, she turned to the bathroom at the far end of the trailer and rummaged through the cabinets hidden behind mirrors. When she returned, she was carrying two bottles, one half empty.
“Okay. Now we need a lighter.”
Again, she stared, then moved, going to the nightstand, digging through it until she came up with a lighter and a package of cigarettes. “She said she quit but I knew Becca. I could always tell when she was fibbing.” Her voice rose to a squeak of pain and she was sobbing, her shoulders jumping with the force of her tears. I hugged her
