Pup bobbed his head once and then it fell heavily, bouncing off Emmit's thigh like a bowling ball.
"While you were gone... I saw one... it walked right past the... door... I just laid here... waiting for it... to come for me..."
Pup was taking deep breaths now, gasping between his words so hard that his mangled body rose off the floor. His voice began to climb and warble, desperation contorting his young, puffy face. He grabbed a handful of Emmit's clothes and tried to pull him closer, but he had no strength left in him.
"It... didn't have... a face, it... all I could... see was... teeth... please god, don't take... don't take me out there... with them..."
He was clawing at the tourniquets now, raking his hooked fingers across the knotted ropes. The neatly cleaved femurs were astonishingly white, the marrow glaring out like two dazed eyes.
"Don't... make me... go out there."
"Alright, Pup," Emmit said, his voice gravelly as he removed his knife. "I'll let you rest now."
He helped Pup roll over onto his back, the boy's glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling. Emmit would have given one of his own eyes to make the other see better, given what he was about to do. He felt for the knots, using his fingertips to follow the tourniquets around the amputations and guide the knife edge under them. He gnawed his lip as he slowly cut the knots off at the base, his stomach hitching every time one of his fingers brushed against the red tangles of sinew that served as Pup's thighs. The first rope snapped like a rubber band, and Emmit began to work on the next one without delaying. He wouldn't look at what he had done; hearing it was bad enough. The arteries emptied themselves all over the floor in rapid spurts, with a sound like water flowing out of a tap as the pressure came and went.
"Almost over, Pup."
The second knot came off; the rope whipped apart. Now the flowing liquid sound was doubled, and he could already hear Pup's breathing beginning to slow. Emmit sat with a hand on the kid's chest, feeling each expansion and contraction weakening. It didn't take long; Pup exhaled one last time, and then simply never took another breath. His bloodshot eyes didn't change, even in death. He looked like a wax dummy now, a grotesque Halloween decoration in a haunted house somewhere. Emmit used the side of his thumb to try to close Pup’s eyelids, just like they always did in the movies. It didn't work. Pup's eyelids drifted slowly back open, giving the kid the look of a man who had died while hopelessly drunk. His left eye was frozen, more closed than his right in a ghastly corpse wink.
They won't get you now, Pup.
"Emmit!" The Rev shouted, as silently as he could. "Movement out here, we should get going. Is he...?"
Emmit nodded solemnly, folding Pup's thin arms and hands over his skinny ribcage.
"He's gone, Tim. It's what he wanted."
The Rev bowed his head, the end of his spear thumping on the floor as he leaned on it like it was the shoulder of a trusted friend. He shook his head, muttering to himself in harsh whispers, and Emmit could sense a deep rage boiling inside him. A rage that had probably always been there, suppressed by the disgraced Reverend's love for alcohol and his unwavering faith in a God that didn’t seemed to have any mercy for him.
"I think you did the right thing," he said finally, lifting his dark, vengeful eyes to meet Emmit's. "If we tried to carry him out of here and they got their hands on him... you know? You gave him a peaceful death. If he gets back up, then… we’ll just do it again."
Emmit was still looking at Pup's mismatched eyes when he heard the Rev cough, a sharp, rough bark that sounded like it had startled him. When Tim began to groan, his throat bubbling and full of liquid, Emmit felt his blood run cold. That hadn't been a cough.
Emmit was on his feet even before the pins and needles were gone, and even though the Rev was across the room Emmit could see the shadow spreading around the strange bulge that had formed in his clothes. It stuck out just beneath his rib cage, like a large bird had somehow gotten trapped inside his "armor" and was pecking its way out. The Rev was staring down at it, his hands outstretched as if asking a silent question. His spear stood on end, balancing for a half second before clattering to the floor. The cloth around the strange bulge began to darken and saturate, and the black stain spread out from it like runny ink across an old canvas.
"Emmit..." he burbled, then dropped heavily to one knee. There was a spear sticking out of his back, and at the end of the spear, grinning as he began twisting the long wooden shaft back and forth like a giant lever, was Poke. Emmit heard a muffled shredding sound as Poke placed one foot on the back of the Rev's bent leg and wrenched the spear free, and with nothing holding him upright, the Rev pitched forward. Emmit felt hot drops of blood speckle his face, thrown from the spear as Poke twirled it like the prop of a plane.
One of Tim’s arms was pinned under his body, the other stretched far out in front of him as if reaching for something that no one could see but him. He bled out almost instantly, a huge, dark puddle expanding from beneath him like a slow-motion shockwave. There was a
