Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

“They’re coming right after us. Can’t you hear them?”

Mattie tried to focus, to pick out some sound besides C.P.’s labored breathing and the rustle of his jacket. There. The sound of boots in the snow, and then Griffin saying to Jen, “I hope to God he stays down.”

William. They’d hit William and left him there in the snow.

William killed my mother.

Killed my mother.

I lived with him all these years and he’d killed my mother and I never knew.

Tears flowed out of her eyes, running over her cheeks and mixing with blood on her face.

I’ll never see her again. I can’t remember her face and now I’ll never see her again.

“I’m sorry, I have to put you down,” C.P. said. “Do you think you can walk?”

She nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her—he’d twisted his head around to see how close the others were following.

“Damn,” he muttered, and released Mattie to the ground.

Her legs felt like water and she couldn’t get them to prop her up. A second later she was folded up on the ground, her face in the snow.

“Ah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” C.P. said.

His hands were at her shoulders, pulling her up, but she only managed to get to her knees. He noticed her tears then and she saw his look of alarm.

“Did I hurt you? I’m such a stupid klutz, I’m sorry. But you have to try to get up because that guy might come after us. I don’t know how hard Jen hit him with the rock but he seemed like the Terminator type to me.”

Mattie didn’t understand what he was talking about with the Terminator, but she did understand that William would come after them. She’d run from him, so he would pursue. She understood this but she still couldn’t make her body do what she wanted it to do. Every part of her wanted to curl up, to hide, to burrow beneath the snow so she could weep until she had no more tears.

“He . . . killed . . .” she said, and coughed. He’d bruised her throat again, and she’d hardly recovered from the last choking. She had no idea when she’d be able to speak again.

C.P. opened his mouth but whatever he was about to say was lost as Griffin and Jen finally caught up with them. Jen was half-dragging Griffin, her arm holding him up. The blow from the shovel looked much worse than the one that Mattie had taken. Griffin’s face was drawn and he seemed to be barely holding on to consciousness.

“He can’t walk,” Jen said. “I think he might have a concussion.”

“Her, too,” C.P. said. “Every time she tries to walk she collapses.”

“That motherfucker,” Jen said, and the vulgarity was shocking to Mattie, who’d hardly ever heard William even say “damn.” “I’d like to go back and hit him with his own shovel a few times.”

“Was he down when you left?” C.P. asked.

“I didn’t stop to look,” she said. “I hit him twice in the side of the head with the rock, Griffin kicked him in the balls and then we started running. Well, running as much as we could with these packs on. Then Griffin started stumbling around like he was drunk. We can’t stop here, though. We haven’t gone very far, and once that guy gets up again, he’ll follow us. We’ve left a pretty obvious trail.”

She gestured behind her at the broken snow covered in their footprints.

“Go . . . down . . .” Mattie said, and coughed again.

“Why don’t you give her some of your water, dummy?” Jen said to C.P.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot about water.”

Jen rolled her eyes at Mattie, like they were sharing a joke. Mattie didn’t really understand the joke but she felt a strange warmth in her chest, unwarranted by the small gesture. For a second it had been like having a sister again, having a person to share secret things.

C.P. fumbled a bottle off his pack and handed it to Mattie. She stared at it. It was bright red and had a black top and it looked so foreign after the metal cups she’d used in the cabin that for a moment she didn’t know what to do with it.

“You unscrew this part,” he said, taking it back from her and demonstrating.

“Thank . . .”

He waved his hands at her. “Don’t try to talk. Just drink.”

The water was very cold and it was hard to swallow, but she managed to force some down. She carefully screwed the top back on and handed it to him.

“I know you’re in pain,” Jen said, “but do you think you could walk a little if C.P. helps you?”

Mattie wondered why Jen thought she was in pain. Because her face was bloody? Then she realized she was still crying. The tears wouldn’t stop. She swiped at her face with her mitten, but it didn’t do any good.

“My . . . mother,” she said, and gestured in the direction of William. “He . . . killed.”

“You didn’t know, did you?” C.P. asked.

Mattie shook her head, felt the grief swelling inside her, pushing against her skin, making her feel like she would burst. How could she live with this? How could she ever feel whole again?

My mother is dead. What happened to Heather?

What if William had killed her, too, killed her smiling sister who built fairy houses in the yard and danced with Mattie—not Mattie, Samantha—to loud music and built forts in the living room out of blankets and pillows? What would Mattie do then if there were no one to go home to?

You’re not going back to William no matter what.

But she’d come away without the money she’d so carefully hidden, without any food or clothing.

“I’m really sorry,” Jen said. She seemed to be feeling the effort of holding Griffin. Her face was tight and her voice strained. “About your mother, I mean. And I’m sorry it was such a crap way to find out about it. But we really have to run—or walk, or stumble, whatever. I’ve got a feeling that guy has a gun, and when he wakes up he’s going