Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-crossed Love

New York Times bestseller Marjorie M. Liu is an attorney who has worked and traveled all over Asia. She’s best known for the Dirk & Steele series, detailing the otherworldly cases of the Dirk & Steele detective agency, which include Tiger Eye, Shadow Touch, The Last Twilight, and The Wild Road. She also writes the successful Hunter Kiss series, which includes The Iron Hunt and Darkness Calls. Her latest books are In the Dark of Dreams, the tenth Dirk & Steele novel, and A Wild Light, the third in the Hunter Kiss series. She lives in Indiana.

In the taut and suspenseful story that follows, she takes us to a postapocalyptic future, one of people just managing to scrape out a meager living from the soil, where every shadow has teeth and very real and deadly Things That Go Bump in the Night lurk in the darkness, kept at bay only by the strangest of alliances—and by the power of the blood.

After the Blood

I didn’t have time to grab my coat. Only shoes and the shotgun. I had gone to sleep with the fanny pack belted to my waist, so the shells were on hand and jangled as I ran. I had forgotten they would make noise. Not that it mattered.

No moon. Slick gravel and cold rain on my face. Neighbor’s dogs were barking and I wished they would shut up, but they didn’t, and I kept expecting one of them to make that strangled yip sound like Pete-Pete had, out in the woods where I couldn’t ever find his body. I missed him bad, nights like these. So did the cats.

The cowbell was still ringing when I reached the gate, and I heard a loud thud: a hoof striking wood. Chains rattled. I raised the shotgun, ready.

“They’re coming,” whispered a strained voice, murmuring something else in German that I couldn’t understand. “Amanda?”

“Here,” I muttered. “Hurry.”

Hinges creaked, followed by the soft tread of hooves and wheels rolling over gravel. Slow, too slow. I dug in my heels, hearing something else in the darkness: a hacking cough, wet and raw.

“Steven,” I warned.

“We’re through,” he said.

I pulled the trigger, gritting my teeth against the recoil. The muzzle flash generated a brief light—enough to glimpse a hateful set of eyes. And then, almost in the same instant, I heard a muffled scream. I fired again, just for good measure.

Steven slammed into the gate. I ran to help him set the lock—one-handed, shotgun braced against my hip. I heard more coughs—deeper, masculine—and got bathed in the scent of rotten meat and shit. All those unclean mouths, breathing on me from the other side of the fence. A rock whistled past my ear. I threw one back with all my strength. Steven dragged me away.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, breathless—and gave the boy a hard look; his body faintly visible, even in the darkness. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Steven let go. I couldn’t see his face, but I heard him stumble back to the horses. I almost stopped him, needing an answer almost as much as I feared one—but I smelled something else in that moment.

Charred meat.

I stood on my toes and reached inside the wagon. Felt a blanket, and beneath, a leg.

When? I wanted to ask, but my voice wouldn’t work. I clung to the edge of the wagon, needing something to lean on, but that lasted only until Steven began leading the horses up the driveway. I followed, uneasy—trying to ignore the sounds of rocks hitting the fence and those raw hacking coughs that quieted into whines. Sounded like dogs crawling on their stomachs, begging not to be beaten. Made me think of Pete-Pete again. My palms were sweaty around the shotgun.

Steven remained silent until we reached the house. Lamplight flickered through the windows, which were crowded with feline faces pressed against the glass. It felt good to see again. Steven dropped the reins and walked to the back of the wagon. He was a couple inches taller than me, and slender in the shoulders. Just a teen, clean-shaven, wearing a dark wide-brimmed hat. His suspenders were loose and his pants ended well above his ankles. A pair of old tennis shoes clung precariously to his feet.

“They hurt him bad,” said the boy, unlatching the backboard. “Even though he saved their lives.”

“He didn’t fight back?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

Steven gave me a bitter look. “They called him a devil.”

Called him other things, too, I guessed. But that couldn’t be helped. We had all expected this, one way or another. Only so long a man could keep secrets while living under his family’s roof.

I tried to hand my gun to the boy. He stared at the weapon as though it were a live snake, and put his hands behind his back.

“Steven,” I said sharply, but he ducked his head and edged around me toward the back of the wagon. No words, no argument. He did the job I was going to do, taking hold of those blanketed ankles and pulling hard. The body slid out slowly, but the cooked smell of human flesh curdled through my nostrils, and I had to turn away with my hand over my mouth.

I went into the house. Cats scattered under the sagging couch and quilt, while kittens mewed from the box placed in front of the iron-bellied stove. I left the shotgun on the kitchen table, beside the covered bucket of clean water I had pulled from the hand pump earlier that evening, and grabbed a sheet from the line strung across the living room. I started pulling down panties, too, and anything else embarrassing.

Just in time. Steven trudged inside, breathing hard—dragging that blanket-wrapped body across my floor. He didn’t stop for directions. Just moved toward the couch, one slow inch at a time. A cat peered from beneath the quilt and hissed.

I helped sling the body on the couch. A foot slipped free of the blanket, still wearing a shoe. The leather had melted into the blackened skin. Steven and I stared at that foot. I wanted to cry—it was the proper thing to do—but except for a hard, sick lump in my throat, my eyes burned dry.

“What about you?” I asked Steven quietly. “They know you brought him here?”

“I put the fire out,” he replied, and pulled off his hat with a shaking hand. “Don’t know if I can go home after that.”

I rubbed his shoulder. “Put the horses in the barn, then take my bed. This’ll be awhile.”

“Our dad,” he began, and stopped, swallowing hard. Crumpling the hat in his hands. He could not look at me. Just that blackened foot. I stepped between him and the couch, but he did not move until I placed my palm on his chest, pushing him away. He gave me a wild look, haunted. I noticed, for the first time, that he smelled like smoke.

But I didn’t have to say a word. He turned and walked out the front door, head down, shoulders pinched and hunched. Some of the cats followed him.

I stayed with the body. Sat down at the bottom of the couch, beside that exposed foot. It took me a long time to peel off the shoe. Longer than it had to. I wanted to vomit every time I touched that warm, burned skin. I peeled and pulled, and finally just cut everything away with a pair of old scissors. Steven passed through only once, from the front door to my bedroom. If he looked, I didn’t know. I ignored him.

I unrolled the body from the blanket. Worked on all those clothes—and the other shoe. Stripped off what had been hand-sewn pants made of coarse denim, and a shirt of a softer weave. The beard I knew so well was gone. So was that face, except for blackened skin and exposed bone. His mouth was open, twisted into a scream so visceral his lower jaw had unhinged.

“Stupid,” I whispered to him, rubbing my eyes and running nose. “You had nothing to prove.”

Same as me. Nothing to prove. Nothing at all.

I had brought in a knife with the scissors—sterilized in boiling water and wrapped in a clean rag covered in some faded drawing of a black mouse in red pants. I did not want to touch the blade, but I did. I did not want to hold my arm over that open mouth, but I did that, too. Sucked down a deep breath. Steeled myself. Cut open my wrist.

Nothing big. I wasn’t crazy. But the blood welled up faster than I expected. My vision seemed to fade behind a white cloud, and I almost lay down on that burned body. But I took a couple quick breaths, grit my teeth, and stopped looking at the blood.

Just that mouth. Just that mouth I held my wrist over. Swallowing all those little drops of my life.

It took a while. I didn’t want to make a mistake. This was the worst I had ever seen. So bad I began to wonder if this was the end, the last and final straw. Got harder to breathe after that. My throat burned. Cats pawed my legs and took turns in my lap, butting my chin and kneading my thighs with their prickly little claws. One of them licked a charred finger, but didn’t try to chew, so I let that go.

My wrist throbbed. So did my head, after a time. I kept at it. Until, finally, I noticed a little color around his lips. A hint of pink beneath the blackened skin. I closed my eyes, counting to one hundred. When I looked again, it wasn’t my imagination. Pink skin. Signs of life.

I pressed my wrist against his burned mouth and felt his lips tighten just a hairsbreadth. Good enough for me. I was exhausted. I didn’t move my wrist, but stretched out on the couch beside him, ignoring the smell and crunch of cooked skin. A cat walked up the length of my hip, while another perched on the cushion above me, licking my hair. Purrs thundered, everywhere.

And that mouth closed tighter.

I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I WOKE CHOKING, water trickling down my throat.

But there was also a hand behind my head and something hard on my lips, and both flashed me back to the bad days. I sat up fighting, heart all thunder. My fist slammed into a hard chest.

A naked man squatted in front of me, gripping a cup of water in his hand. Scared me for a moment, terrified me, part of me still asleep—but then I took a breath and my vision cleared, and I saw the man. I saw him.

He was bald, scorched, raw. Not much better than a half-cooked chicken, and certainly uglier. But his eyes were blue and glittering as ice, and I smiled crooked for that cold gaze.

“Henry.” I wiped water from my mouth, trying not to tremble. “Aren’t you a sight?”

“Amanda,” he replied. But that was it. Only my name. That other hand of his still held the back of my head. I looked down. My wrist had been bandaged. I saw other things, too, and dragged the quilt from the couch to toss over his hips. His mouth twitched—from bitterness or humor, I couldn’t tell—but he leaned in to kiss me.

Just my cheek. Slow and deliberate, lingering with our faces pressed close. I slid my arms around his neck and held tight.

“Don’t make me cry again,” I whispered.

Henry dragged in a deep breath. “How did I get here?”

“Steven.”

He leaned harder against me. “Did anyone see him?”

“We haven’t talked about what happened. But I’d say yes.” I pulled away, speaking into his shoulder: a patchwork of pink and blackened flesh. “He said you saved lives.”

“I gave in.” Henry’s fingers tightened in my hair. “I killed.”

“Monsters.”

“I killed,” he said again, shivering. “I violated God’s rule.”

You did what you had to, I wanted to tell him, but those were cheap words compared to what he needed; and that was more than I could give him.

Bedsprings creaked from the other room. I glanced toward the window. Still dark out, but it had to be close to dawn. I heard birds, and the goats; and farther away, that dog barking. I tried to stand. Henry grabbed my wrist. “You need to rest. What you did last night—”

“I’m fine,” I lied, blinking heavily to keep my vision straight. “Stay here.”

But he didn’t. He wrapped the quilt around his hips and limped outside with me, followed by several cats, bounding, twining, pouncing in the grass. Little guards. Cool air felt good on my face, and though Henry did not take my hand, our arms brushed as we walked.

I had built the rabbit hutch inside the barn. Horses stirred restlessly when we entered, and so did the goats in their dark pen, but the chickens were quiet. I felt all the animals watching as I undid the latch and reached inside for a sleek brown body. The rabbit trembled. So did Henry, when I handed it to him.

“I wish you wouldn’t watch,” he murmured, but almost in the same breath he bit the rabbit’s throat. It screamed. So did he, but it was a muffled, relieved sound. I looked away. All the other rabbits were huddled together, shaking. I could hear Henry feeding, and it was a wet sucking sound that made my skin crawl and my wrist throb.

I counted seconds. Counted until they added up to minutes. Then I took another rabbit from the hutch and held it out, head turned. Henry took it from me and walked away. No longer limping. I heard the rabbit scream before he reached the door.

I did chores. Freshened the water for the goats, brushed the horses down with handfuls of hay and the palms of my hands. Thought, again, about building a pen for some pigs and how much I’d have to trade upriver for several in an upcoming litter I’d heard about in town. I wanted to get set before winter. Trees needed cutting, too, for firewood. I had been putting that off.

When I left the barn, I found Henry near the garden, digging a hole just large enough for two dead rabbits. Soil was wet and smelled good, like the tomatoes ripening on the vines. I saw light on the horizon.

“I’ll finish that,” I said. “You need to get inside.”

“I need a walk,” he mumbled. I realized he had been weeping. “I don’t want to see Steven.”

“Too bad.” I crouched, taking his hand. His skin appeared healthier, burn marks, fading. “You may be all he has now. Besides, it’s too close to dawn for a walk. Don’t be stupid.”

“Stupid,” he echoed, and pulled his hand away. “You should have seen how my dad—how they—looked at me. How they’ll look at Steven now. My fault, Amanda. I was too weak to leave.”

The rabbits were still warm, but hollow, flattened. Drops of blood coated their throats. I dropped them into the hole Henry had dug and pushed dirt over their bodies.

“Staying was harder than leaving,” I said, but that was all. The house door creaked open, somewhere out of sight, then banged shut. Henry tensed. I backed away. I doubt he noticed. Too busy watching his brother, who strode down the path toward us—just a shadow in the predawn light, shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in his pockets, hat tilted low over his eyes.

I left them alone. Went back to the house for my shotgun and a coat, and then headed down to the fence. Looking for monsters.

Cats followed me.

THE LAND HAD been in the family a long time. Long enough for stories to be passed down, stories that never changed except for the weather, or the animal, or the person: stories involving my kin, who were neighbors and friends to the Plain People. Or the Amish, as my mother had called them, respectfully.

She was dead now, gone a couple years. She and my father had both survived the Big Death, though cancer and infection finally killed them. Mundane, compared to what had destroyed most everyone else: a plague that struck cities, a virus that killed in hours or days. My brother was lost that way—gone to college in Chicago, which didn’t exist anymore. It was for him that I didn’t like hearing stories about the Big Death, though some refugee survivors seemed to get kicks from the attention they received when telling the tale. Blood in the streets, and riots, and the government quarantining the cities and suburbs with tanks and barricades, and guns. No burials for the millions dead, no burials for the cities.

Just the forests that had grown up around them. An unnatural growth, some said. Cities of the dead, swallowed by trees. And, in the intervening years, other strange things. Unnatural visitations.

But folks didn’t like to tell those stories. Plague was easier to swallow than magic.

The fence around my land was made of wood planks instead of strung barbed wire. Maybe my great-grandfather had built the thing, or his father—I didn’t know for sure—just that it was older than living memory, and had been tended and mended over the last hundred years by people who knew what they were doing; so many times over, there probably wasn’t much original wood left in the damn thing.

It was a good fence. And I’d made my own additions.

Still dark out. Skies clearing, revealing stars. I checked the gate at the end of the driveway. Couldn’t see much on the other side, except for a splash of something dark on the gravel. Blood, maybe. No body. Dragged away into the woods with Pete-Pete’s bones. I undid the lock, crossed over. Shotgun held carefully. Cats walked with me, but didn’t hiss or flatten their ears. Just watched the shadows beyond the road, in the trees. I didn’t hear anything except for birds.

“Hiding from the light,” said a quiet voice behind me. I didn’t flinch. One of the cats had glanced over its shoulder, which was warning enough.

Henry stepped close, still naked except for the quilt. I said, “You should be in the house.”

“I have time. Not safe here, all by yourself.”

“Got an army.” I held up my gun and glanced at the cats. “Steven?”

He said nothing. Just took a few jolting steps toward the woods. I grabbed him, afraid of what he would do. He didn’t fight me, but the tension was thick in his arm. I pretended not to see the sharp tips of his teeth as he pulled back his lips to scent the air.

“They’re in there,” he said, his voice husky. “I tasted their blood last night.”

I tightened my grip, both on his arm and the shotgun. Cats twined around our legs. “Did you like it?”

Henry looked at me. “Yes.”

“It’s not a sin,” I said, “to be yourself. You told me that.”

“Before I was turned into this.” He touched his mouth, pressing his thumb against a sharp tooth. “I was called a demon last night. Dad put the torch to me himself, and I didn’t stop him. I kept hoping he would stop first.”

I squeezed his arm. “Come on. Before the sun rises.”

“I have time,” he said again, but gently, holding my gaze. “Please, let’s walk.”

So we did. On the dangerous side of the fence, outside the border of the land; my cornfields, and the potatoes, and the long rows of spinach, green beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I didn’t have a rabbit problem. Cats strolled along the rails and through the tall grass, which soaked the bottoms of my jeans. Henry did not notice the wet, or chill. He watched the forest, and the sky, and my face.

“Stop,” I said, and knelt to examine a weather-beaten post. It was hard to see. I had no batteries for the flashlights stored in the cellar, but I had traded for some butane lighters some years back, and those still worked. I slipped one from my pocket, flipped the switch. A little flame appeared. I needed it for only a moment.

“It looks fine,” Henry murmured.

“You always say that,” I replied, and held out my finger to him. He hesitated—and then nipped it, ever so carefully, on the sharp point of his tooth. I felt nothing except a nick of pain, and maybe sadness, or comfort, or affection—love—but nothing as storybooks said I should feel; no shiver, no lust, no mind-meld. I had done my research in the library, which still stood in town, governed by three crones who lived there and guarded the books. I had read fiction, and myths, and looked at pictures on the backs of movies that couldn’t be played anymore. But in the end, none of it meant much. Problems just had to be lived through.

I smeared a spot of my blood on the fencepost and said a prayer. Nothing big. It was the feeling behind the words that mattered, and I prayed for safety and light, and protection. I prayed to keep the monsters out.

We moved on. A hundred feet later, stopped again. I repeated the ritual. Weak spots. No way to tell just from looking, but I knew, in my blood, in my heart.

“They got through last night,” Henry said, watching me carefully. “Past the fence to the front door. That’s what started it. I was in the barn, cleaning the stalls. I heard Mom scream.”

“I’m sorry.” I glanced at the sky—lighter now, dawn chasing stars. Sun would soon be rising. “I’ll swing around the farm today and see if I can’t shore up the line without your folks seeing me.”

“Take Steven with you.”

I shook my head, patting the tabby rubbing against my shins. “Won’t do that. If they try and hurt him—”

“Then we’ll know. It’s important, Amanda.”

I started walking. “Have him talk to me about it. His choice. No pressure from you.”

Henry stayed where he was, clutching the quilt in one hand. His broad shoulders were almost free of burned skin; and so were his arms, thick with muscle. He had been teethed on hard labor, and it showed.

But Henry was a good-looking man when he wasn’t burned alive; and it hurt to feel him staring at me. Staring at me like I wanted to be stared at—with hunger, and trust, and that old sadness that sometimes I couldn’t bear.

I looked away, just for a moment. One of the cats meowed.

When I turned back he was gone.

NO ONE KNEW, of course. About the blood on the fence. Prior to last night, no one had known about Henry’s affliction, either. Just Steven and me.

Small town. Caught on the border of a government-registered Enclave, one of hundreds scattered across the former United States. Not many official types ever came around, except a couple times a year with fresh medicines and other odds and ends—military caravans, powered by gas. No one else had fuel. Might be some in the quarantined cities, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would go there. The virus might still be active. Waiting in the bones.

Twenty years, waiting. Little or no manufacturing in all that time; no currency, no airplanes, no television or postal service, or ice cream from the freezer; or all the little things I had taken for granted as a kid and could hardly remember. Just stories now. Lives that were and would never be again. The past, gone unmissed.

Maybe it was for the best. Survivors of the Big Death had to make do with leftovers. Farming experience was more valuable than guns. So was living without electricity and plumbing. Which meant—to the dismay of some—that Amish, and folks like them, now held the real power. Government was encouraging them to spread out, establish new agricultural communities—from Atlantic to Pacific. Nothing asked for in return, though it had created an odd dynamic. I’d heard accusations of favoritism in business dealings, complaints about cold shoulders and standoffishness. Other things, too—bitter and sour.

But not all communities were the same, and if you were a good neighbor, the Plain People were good to you. Even if, when you knew them too well, they had their own problems. Religion was no cure for dysfunction.

I rode in the wagon beside Steven. Brought my shotgun—unloaded in case anyone checked. Shells were in my pockets. Knives, hidden inside my boots. We weren’t the only ones on the road, which had been one of those two-lane highways back in the old days. Still a highway, just not for cars—which rusted at the side of the road. Relics of another age. None had been dumped in the fields. Plenty of land, maybe, but it all needed to be used to grow food. Vast vegetable gardens and grazing cattle surrounded several battered trailer homes. Little kids playing outside waved to us, and went back to chasing the dog.

Steven and I didn’t talk much until we reached the border of his family’s farm. I made him stop twice and pricked my finger for blood. Blessed the fence.

“God has a plan,” Steven murmured, watching me.

I glanced at him. “I hate it when you and Henry say that.”

“Better God than the alternative.” He leaned forward, studying his hands—his trembling hands. “I want God to be responsible for what changed us. I want God to have a reason for us being different. We’re not demons, Amanda.”

“I agree,” I replied sharply. “Now let me concentrate.”

“You don’t even know how you do it,” he murmured, still not looking at me. “Or why your blood works against… them.”

Because I will it to, whispered a small voice inside my mind. But that was nonsense—and even if it wasn’t, years of considering the matter had given me nothing worth discussing. The same instincts that had led me to dot fenceposts with my blood seemed just as powerful as the driving urge of birds to fly south for winter, or cats to hunt—or Henry to drink blood.

I worked quickly, and climbed back into the wagon. Steven clucked at the horses. I kept my gaze on the fence, watching for weak spots—listening for them inside my head. But it was near the gate where I saw the breaking point.

“Those boards are new,” I said, jumping down and crouching. “Or were, before last night.”

“Dad replaced them. No one told Henry or me.” Steven’s voice was hoarse, his face so pale. He looked ready to vomit. “Found out too late.”

“You don’t have to do this. We can go back.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I need them to understand. None of us could stop what happened.”

Not before, I imagined him adding. But we could stop it this time.

I stared past Steven at the woods. “It’s been hard for you, these past few years. Helping your brother pretend he’s human. Keeping up the illusion, every day, in your own home.”

A strained smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Lying all the time. Praying for forgiveness. Wears on the soul.”

“Cry me a river,” I said. “You know you’re a good person.”

“By your standards, maybe.”

“Ah. My weak morals. My violent temper. The jeans I wear.” I gave him a sidelong glance. “I thought pride was a sin.”

He never replied. I finished blessing the fence and pulled myself back into the wagon. Less than a minute later, we turned up the drive, almost a quarter-mile long, from the fence to the house. It was a sunny day, so bright the white clapboard house near glowed with light. Purple petunias grew in tangled masses near the clothesline; chickens scattered beneath billowing sheets, pecking feed thrown down by a little girl dressed in a simple blue dress. A black cap had been tied over her head, and her curly brown hair hung in braids. She looked up, staring at the wagon. Steven waved.

“Anna is getting big,” I said, just as the little girl dropped the bowl of chicken feed and ran toward the house—screaming. I flinched. So did Steven.

He stopped the horses before we were halfway up the drive. I slid out of the wagon, watching as a man strode from the barn. He held an ax. My unloaded shotgun was on the bench. I touched the stock and said, “Samuel, if you’re not planning on using that cutter, maybe you should put it down.”

Samuel Bontrager did not put down the ax. He was a stocky, bow-legged man; broad shoulders, sinewy forearms, lean legs; and a gut that hung precariously over the waist of his pants. He had a long beard, more silver than blond. Henry might look like him one day. If he aged.

Last time I’d seen the man, he had been admiring a new horse; a delicate high-stepping creature traded as a gift for his eldest daughter. Smiles, then. But now he was pale, tense, staring at me with a gaze so hollow he hardly seemed alive.

“Go,” he whispered, as the house door banged open and his wife, Rachel, emerged. “Go on, get out.”

“Dad,” Steven choked out, but Samuel let out a despairing cry, and staggered forward with that ax shaking in his hands. He did not swing the weapon, but brandished it like a shield. Might as well have been a cross.

I took my hand from the shotgun. “We need to talk.”

Rachel walked down the porch stairs, each step stiff, sharp. Her gaze never left Steven’s face, but her husband was shaking his head, shaking like that was all he knew how to do, his eyes downcast, when open at all.

“Out,” he said hoarsely. “I saw a crime committed last night that was against God, and I will not tolerate any who condone it.”

“You saw a young man save his parents from death.” I stepped toward him, hands outstretched. “You saw both your sons take that burden on their souls.” To keep you safe, I didn’t add. Making amends for what they couldn’t do years ago.

I might as well have spoken out loud. Rachel made a muffled gasping sound, a sob, touching her mouth with her scarred, tanned hands. I saw those memories in her eyes. Samuel finally looked at his son, his gaze blazing with sorrow.

“You held them down,” he whispered. “You held those men down… for him.”

I gave Steven a sharp look, but he was staring at his father. Pale, shaking, with some strange light in his too-bright eyes.

“They were going to kill you,” he breathed. “I did nothing wrong. Neither did Henry. We did not forsake the Lord.”

“You held them down,” Samuel hissed again, trembling. “And he ripped out their throats. He used nothing but his mouth to do this. We all saw it. He was not human in that moment. He was not a child of God. He was… something else… and I will not have such a monstrosity in my home. Nor will I bear the sight of any who would take that monster’s side.”

“Samuel,” I said, looking past him as his weeping wife, who swayed closer, clutched her hands over her mouth. “Those were not human men he killed.”

“Then what was my son, if those were not men?” Samuel tossed his ax in the dirt and rubbed a hand over his ashen face. “I would rather have died than see my own child murder.”

He was telling the truth. I expected nothing less from a man of his faith. Nor could I condemn it. He believed what he believed, and it was the reason so many towns and Enclaves had become safe places to live. It was also why so many local men of the Amish were gone now, in the grave.

And why Anna Bontrager did not look like either of her fair-haired parents.

“Steven,” I said quietly. “Get out of the wagon. We’re going.”

“No,” he whispered, flashing me a desperate look. “Tell them, Amanda.”

Tell them what happened years ago in the woods.

But I looked at Steven, and then his parents, and could not bring myself to say the words. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Steven and Henry’s belongings,” I said instead. “We’ll take them.”

“Gone,” said Rachel, so softly I could barely hear her. She drew close to her husband’s side, and her bloodshot gaze never left Steven’s face. “Burned.”

Steven sank down on the wagon bench. Breaking, breaking—I could hear his heart breaking. I suddenly hated Henry for not being here. For asking me to do this.

I grabbed my shotgun off the wagon and touched Steven’s leg. “Come on. Let’s go.”

He gave me a dazed look. Samuel, behind me, cleared his throat and whispered, “Take the wagon and horses. I don’t want anything he touched.”

I ignored him, still holding Steven’s gaze. I extended my hand. After a long moment, he took it, and I pulled him off the wagon. He kept his head down and did not look back at his parents. I pushed him ahead of me, very gently, and we walked down the long driveway toward the road.

Samuel called out, “Amanda.”

I stopped. Steven did not. I glanced over my shoulder. Samuel and his wife were leaning on each other. I wanted to pick up handfuls of gravel and throw it at their faces. I wanted to ask them to remember the bad days, and that violent afternoon. Maybe the choice not to act had always been clear to them, but not to Henry. Not to his brother.

“If you keep the boy with you,” Samuel began, but I held up my hand, stopping him.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t threaten me.”

“No threats,” Rachel replied, pulling away from her husband; pushing him, even. “We care about you. Our families have always been… close.”

More close than she realized. Close enough that she would not want me here, should the truth be known. All those little truths, wrapped up in lies.

All I could do was stare, helpless. “Then don’t do this to Steven. No matter what happened last night, you have to forgive him. It’s your way.”

Rachel’s face crumpled. Samuel clamped his hand down hard on her shoulder.

“Forgiveness isn’t the same as acceptance. Steven will be held accountable,” he said, with ominous finality.

Rachel shuddered. For a moment I thought she would defy her husband, but she visibly steeled herself and gave me an impossibly sad look that reminded me of my mother when she would dig out old pictures of my brother.

“I know about the violence that was committed against you,” she whispered, so softly I could barely hear her voice. “But don’t let that be an excuse to harbor violence in your heart.”

“Or my home?” I gave her a bitter smile. “There are just as many kinds of violence as there are forgiveness.” I looked at Samuel. “You set Henry on fire. You killed your own son. No one’s free of sin in this place.”

I turned and walked away. Steven waited for me at the end of the driveway. I grabbed his arm and marched up the road, holding him close. Even when the Bontrager farm was out of sight, I didn’t let go.

I said, “You told them what happened to me?”

“She just knew,” Steven whispered. “It was the same men, and she knew.”

I didn’t want to think about that. But I did. I had time. It took us more than an hour to walk home. Longer, because I detoured to check other parts of his family’s fence; and then mine. No need to bless any other borders in these parts. Folks had their own problems, but not like ours—though this road, between his place and mine, had a reputation amongst locals: few traveled it at night. Years ago, men and women had gone missing; parts of them found at the side of the road, chewed up.

We walked slowly. Met only two other people, the Robersons: a silver-haired woman on a battered bicycle, transporting green onions inside the basket bolted to the handlebars; and her husband, ten years younger, riding another bike and hauling a homemade cart full of caged chicks. On their way to town central. Mr. Roberson wore a gun, but his was just for show. I was the only person in fifty miles who still had bullets. But no one knew that, either, except Henry and Steven.

Steven kept his head down. I forced myself to wave. Mrs. Roberson, still a short distance away, smiled and raised her hand. And then glanced left, to the young man at my side.

Her front tire swerved. She touched her feet to the road to stay upright, but it was rough, and she almost spilled her onions. Her husband caught up, deliberately inserting himself between his wife and us. He touched his gun.

And then they were gone, passing, pedaling down the road. I stopped, turning around to stare. Mr. Roberson looked back. I felt a chill when I met his gaze.

“Amanda,” Steven said.

“What?” I replied, distracted, thinking about the farm and the land, and those crops I would need help harvesting. I thought about the pigs I wanted to buy, and all the little things I needed that only town businesses—businesses run by the Amish—could provide.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and then, even more quietly: “Everyone is going to know. My parents will have already told the Church about Henry and me. We won’t be able to stay here.”

“They think Henry is dead.”

“Doesn’t matter. You won’t have it easy, either.”

“I don’t care,” I lied.

We got home. A small part of me was glad to see it still standing. Cats waited at the gate. Several perched on the posts, watching the woods, and one of them—a scarred bull-necked tom—lay a dead mouse on my boot when I stopped to undo the lock and chain. I thanked him with a scratch behind the ears, and then nudged the small corpse into the grass.

Steven did not talk to me. He headed for the barn. I didn’t ask why. I went into the house, trying not to trip on cats, and set my shotgun down on the kitchen table. Blinds had been pulled. Henry sat on the couch in the dark room. He still wore the quilt. Kittens squirmed in his lap, chewing the fingers of his right hand. In his left he held a small heart carved from wood.

“I wondered, all these years, where this had gone,” he said softly.

“You could have asked.”

“Maybe I was afraid of the answer.” He tore his gaze from the heart, and looked at me. “You had it hidden under your mattress.”

I tilted my head. “Been going through my things?”

“It was an accident,” he said, unconvincingly. “Why was it there?”

So I could touch it at night without having to see it, I almost told him. So I could remember watching your hands as you made it.

Instead I said, “Today went badly. But we both knew it would.”

Henry stared down at the kittens. “I hoped otherwise.”

I hesitated, watching him, wondering how so much had changed. Seemed too far in the past—too painful—but I remembered, in clear moments: fishing on Lost River, eating corn fresh from the stalk under the blazing sun; holding hands, in secret, while hiding under the branches of an oak during some spring storm. We had loved being caught in storms.

I walked to the cellar door, grabbed a candle off the shelf, and lit the wick with the butane lighter. Down the stairs, into the cold dark air. Shadows flickered, some cat-shaped; fleeting, agile, skipping across the cellar floor, in and out of the light as they twined around my legs. I passed crates of cabbage and potatoes, and dried beef. Walked to a massive chest set against the wall and knelt in front of the combination lock. A new shiny lock, straight from the plastic; part of a good trade from an elderly junk woman named Trace who rode through a couple times a year.

Cats butted their heads against my hips, rubbing hard, surrounding me with tails and purrs. I opened the chest. Held up the candle so that I could see the boxes of bullets, and guns wrapped in cloth. Two pistols. One rifle. One hundred boxes of ammunition. Twenty alone were for the shotgun, making a total of two hundred shells. My father’s stash. He had been a careful man, even before the Big Death.

And now I was a rich woman. But not in any way I wanted to make public.

“Going to battle?” Henry asked, behind me.

“Make love, not war,” I quoted my father, and shut the chest, nudging aside paws that got in the way. I locked it one-handed, and turned to face Henry. He still wore nothing but the quilt. Candlelight shimmered across his smooth chest and face. His gaze was cold. Had been for years, since the change.

“Been a while since I saw you without a beard,” I said.

“I never could bring myself to shave it,” he replied softly. “I didn’t want to look unmarried.”

I tried to smile. “Too bad. I’ve heard you’re a catch. Aside from an aversion to the sun, and all the blood.”

“Aside from that.” Henry’s own faint smile faded. “About today. Whatever happened, I’m sorry.”

“Talk to Steven.” I walked to another metal chest, this one unlocked. Inside, clothes. I set down the candle and pulled out my father’s jeans and a red flannel shirt. Musty, old, but no mice had been in them. I fought back a sneeze, and held out the clothing to Henry. He did not take them. Just stared.

“You’re a dead man,” I said bluntly. “To them, you’re dead. Would’ve been that way even if your father hadn’t set you on fire. You couldn’t pretend forever.”

His gaze was so cold. “That doesn’t change who I am.”

I tossed the clothing at his feet. “You changed years ago, even before what happened in the woods. You’ve just been slow to admit it.”

I picked up the candle, stood—and his fingers slid around my arm. Warm, strong grip. I closed my eyes.

“Wife,” he whispered.

I flinched. “Don’t call me that.”

Henry tried to pull me closer. I wrenched my arm free, spilling hot wax on the stone floor and myself. Cats scattered. Upstairs, a door banged. Footsteps passed overhead. I stopped moving. So did Henry. My eyes burned with tears.

“Amanda?” Steven called out from the cellar door. “Henry?”

“Coming,” I croaked, stumbling toward the stairs. Henry grabbed my arm again, and pressed his lips against my ear. He whispered something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar in my ears and my thudding heart.

“Not again,” I finally heard, clearly.

“What?” I mumbled.

But Henry did not answer. He let go, and passed me. I heard him say something to Steven, but that was nothing but a buzz, and I pushed him aside, running up the stairs, from the darkness, from him.

Steven stood in the kitchen. He had been crying. His eyes were red, same as his nose and cheeks. He glanced from my face to Henry—who appeared behind me at the top of the stairs—and his expression twisted with grief or anger. I could not tell.

“I made a bed in the barn,” he said.

“I’ll cook something,” I replied, because it was the right thing to say, and I couldn’t think. “Then we’ll talk about where to put you. The attic will be too cold in winter, but so will the barn.”

“Won’t be here that long,” Steven said. “Not me, not any of us.”

I stared at him. Henry said, “Steven.”

But the young man gave us a look so hollow it chilled my bones. He backed away, across the living room to the front door, whipping off his hat and crushing it in his hands.

“I see what I see,” he said, and then turned, stumbling from the house. Henry started after him. I grabbed his arm, yanking hard.

“Sun,” I said.

“I don’t care,” Henry replied harshly, but stayed where he was, staring at the door. I did not let go. My hand slid down his arm until our fingers entwined. He squeezed, hard.

“What happened?” he whispered. “Out there? What changed us? We were human, Amanda. And then we weren’t.”

“We’re human,” I said. “Just different.”

“Don’t be naïve.” He tried to pull away from me, but this time I was the one holding on, stubborn.

“It wasn’t our fault,” I told him. “Everything was out of our control.”

“Not everything,” he replied, and grabbed the back of my neck. “I made a bad choice. Crawled on my stomach back to what was familiar and normal. I should have stayed instead. Stayed for good, instead of returning to you only when something was wrong.”

“Something was wrong almost once a week,” I reminded him. “I pushed you away. We both needed time.”

“And now this.” Henry’s fingers slid into my hair. “What do you want, Amanda?”

“Nothing,” I told him. “You’re here only because you have to be. You’re like a fox smoked out of its den. Secret marriage, secret life. You’re good at pretending to be something you’re not. Ask yourself what you want, Henry. But don’t ask me.”

I pulled his hand off my neck, and walked toward the front door. He didn’t stop me. I escaped into the sunlight.

I WALKED THROUGH the fields and ate a tomato fresh from the vine, biting into the red flesh like it was an apple. I ate a carrot, too, and then some raw ripe corn, but threw down the cob after only a few bites. Restless, aching, heartsick: a man in my house, a boy in my barn, and the world beyond the fence, threatening me now, in more ways than the woods could harm me.

I stood on the border of my land, staring over the fence at the dense shadows beyond the trees. Cats twined around my legs and climbed the boards and posts. Watching the woods.

You’re not free, I told myself, holding still, holding my breath. It had always been Henry who was caught—in his own lies, his confusion, his conflict. Before, after. And me, trapped in limbo. Waiting. Not for him, but for myself. Years, waiting, to wake up from the haze and bad dreams. Waiting for a little peace.

I had built my fortress. Guarded it with guns and blood. Told myself it would help. Bit by bit, help. Only nothing had changed. Until now.

What do you want, Amanda?

A cat hissed. I glimpsed movement deep in the woods. A flash of white twisted around two dark spots and a moving hole. I saw it again, never still, but always facing me. Restless and hungry.

I stood for a long time, staring, prickly with heat. Burning up, burning, hardly breathing. Caught, trapped. Caught, trapped. Two words that filled my head, droning on and on, until I forced myself to grab the fence, fingers digging into the wood.

What do you want, Amanda?

I climbed the fence. Stopped halfway up, swaying on the rails, and then kept going. Relentless. I jumped down on the other side, the wrong side, tasting blood as I bit my tongue. Cats followed, yowling, ears pressed flat against their skulls. I ignored them and walked across the grass toward the woods. This was my neighbor’s land, but his house was far away on the hill. I heard his dog barking. I didn’t know if the old man ever entered the woods, but his nights were safe. He had not been marked like me—and Henry, and Steven.

It was late afternoon, sun leaning west, lines of light falling away from the trees. Only a matter of time before the shadows grew thick and long. My feet bumped cats—spitting, hissing, growling cats—but I kept walking. Sweating, heart thudding, stomach hurting so badly I wanted to sit down and vomit.

Instead I stood on the other side of sunlight, a golden barrier bathing the grass between the woods and me. Less than a stone’s throw from the dense tangle of branches, vines, knotting together like awful fingers an undergrowth that seemed made to scratch and bind and close around bodies like barbed, clawed nets. Forests had become strange places after the plague—not just here, I had heard, and not just around the dead cities, but everywhere. Made me wonder, sometimes, if there were others out in the world like me and Henry, and Steven. Others, like them.

I forced myself to look at the pale monster that waited in the shadows, holding my breath as it licked the edges of its lipless mouth with a long pink tongue. No eyelids. Hardly a nose, just a stub that looked partially melted, as though it had frozen in middrip off that ashen face.

We stared at each other. Years rolled. Memories. I remembered the woods, and the coarse laughter, and the fear. I still felt those hands on my body. I felt naked again, without my shotgun.

“I know you,” I breathed, trembling—and then, again, louder. “I know you. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve changed, I still know who you were, before.”

I picked up a cat, hugging its quivering body against mine. No purrs. Just a deep-throated growl. I watched that monster in the woods tilt back its head, cutting its cheeks as those long curved nails sank into its thin skin. That pit of a mouth made a rasping sound, like a sob.

“Yeah. You cry,” I whispered, scrubbing my wet cheeks with the back of my hand. “Living for night so you can finish what you started. But I’m not going to let you.”

Cats pushed hard against my legs, reaching up to claw my thighs. I backed away from the woods, gaze locked on the monster. Branches broke somewhere deeper behind it, and wet coughs hacked the air, followed by a faint whine. Sun was sliding lower. The cat in my arms struggled free, hitting the ground with a hiss. I continued to retreat. Never breaking that gaze, though the terror crept on me, harder and heavier with each slow step, something building in my throat—a scream.

Until, finally, my back hit the fence. I climbed it, flew over it, tumbling over the rails and landing on my ass. I sat there, light-headed, heart pounding. Sweat-soaked. My finger throbbed, and so did my wrist. I looked down. Blood seeped through the white bandage and dotted the end of my index finger, which I had been nicking all day. All my fingers were lightly scarred.

I looked through the rails. The monster was gone, but I heard wet coughs and the struggling movements of slow-waking bodies. Men, rotting, rising from their day-graves; pushing aside leaves and brush; ripping the sod pulled over their bodies. Cats gathered close. I petted heads and tried to stand. Took several attempts. My knees were weak, and my skull throbbed.

But I made it. Sun was sitting pretty on the horizon. I walked, slowly, staring at the land and the fence, and those long rows of crops I had planted with my own hands. For a moment it didn’t seem real. I should have been somewhere else. I didn’t know where—all I’d had were books and pictures from old magazines, conversations with my parents—but I knew there had been universities and jobs, once—all kinds of work that needed doing, and that had to be easier than growing food to stay alive.

The world had been smaller, before—and brighter. Faraway cities that took only hours to reach. Endless streams of music and art—so much brilliant color—and those never-ending aisles in pharmacies and grocery stores where nothing ever ran out and no one ever went hungry. A world with laws and justice, and safety. Where being… a little different… was not a black mark on the soul.

The Big Death had stolen away that simpler life.

I saw the house long before I reached it. Small, white, just a box beneath the golden haze of the sky. Red roses grew in massive bushes that surrounded the neat rows of my herb garden.

Henry stood on the porch, dressed in my father’s clothes. They looked strange on him—almost as odd as seeing him bald, without a beard. I stopped walking, caught differently than I had been earlier when facing the monster—another kind of heartache.

He saw me standing on the hill, and strode to the edge of the porch. He held a knife and small block of wood, which he pushed into his pocket. Sun was almost down, but not quite; and I was too far away to stop him as he walked down the steps. Smoke rose from his skin. I started running. Henry did not return to the porch shadows. He teetered, but kept moving toward me. Walking, then stumbling. He fell before I reached him, fire racing across his smoking scalp.

I barreled into his body, rolling us both into the grass. Fire went out before we hit the ground—a little patch hidden from the sunlight by a low-rising knoll. I lay on Henry anyway, covering him, pressing my hands against his partially charred face. Blisters formed on his scalp, and his lips were pressed together in a tight white line of pain—but he stared at me, stared as if none of it mattered—just me and him, me and him, like the old days.

“Stupid,” I whispered. “Sometimes you make me hate you.”

“I hate myself,” he said, grimacing as I pulled my hands from his head—taking some of his burned skin with me. It was disgusting. I tried to sit up, but he touched my face, sliding his other arm around me. He was stronger than I remembered, and I closed my eyes, holding my breath as he brushed his lips over mine. Brief, warm. I relaxed, just a little; and the next time he kissed me, I kissed back.

Henry pulled me down beside him. I lay against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. The sky had darkened. I saw the first hint of stars in the purple east. Purrs rumbled as cats pressed near, settling warm against our bodies.

“You were in braids,” he murmured. “My first memory of you. Sitting on a white sheet in braids and a dress, playing with a doll. My mother told me to look after you. I remember that.”

“I remember other things.” I fingered a button on his flannel shirt. “Maybe we didn’t have vows ordained by any minister, but we made promises to each other.”

“Which I broke,” Henry said quietly. “I failed you. Not just that night, or after—but all those years before, when I loved you and never said a word to anyone. You deserved better than that. And now I’m supposed to be dead.”

I unsnapped a button and slid my hand inside his shirt to press my palm against his bare skin, above his heart. Henry stopped breathing, fumbling for my hand. He held it tightly against his chest.

“You’re not dead to me,” I said. “But I don’t know what to do, Henry.”

“If I was a better man, I would take Steven and leave.”

Bitter laughter choked me, and my eyes started burning again. “Don’t start doing the right thing now. I don’t think I could take it.”

“Neither could I,” he whispered, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the small block of wood. I thought it must be a scrap from the stove bin. He had started carving into it. I could already see the promise of what it would become.

“It’s not much yet,” he said, turning it around in his large hands.

“It’s going to be a heart.” I reached out and touched the edge, lightly.

Henry cleared his throat. “I wanted to make you a new one.”

A warm ache filled my chest. I tried to speak, lost my voice, then whispered, “Don’t take your time.”

Henry exhaled slowly, closing his eyes. I kissed the edge of his jaw—once, twice. When I kissed him again, he turned his head and caught my mouth with his. Gentle at first, then harder. His sharp teeth cut my lip. I tasted blood. He broke away.

I grabbed his jaw. “Don’t.”

Henry shuddered, twisting out of my grip. “Amanda—”

He stopped, looking sharply to the east. A moment later, I heard the neighbor’s dog begin to bark. Distant, urgent. Cats scattered. I sat up, Henry following me—both of us holding still, listening.

“They’ve left the woods,” I said. “Hunting.”

Henry made a small, dissatisfied sound. “Hunting just us. I’ve always wondered why they never actively sought out other families. If all they wanted was to kill—”

I cut him off. “That’s all they want.”

He frowned, but made no reply. Simply tilted his head, as though listening to something beyond us.

“Where’s Steven?” he asked suddenly.

We stared at each other—and I stumbled to my feet, running toward the house. I called Steven’s name. He did not respond.

My shotgun was on the table where I had left it. I grabbed the weapon and the fanny pack full of shells. Henry appeared in the doorway. I took one look at his face and knew.

“He’s not here,” I said breathlessly, belting the ammunition around my waist.

Henry’s expression darkened. He turned and disappeared. By the time I reached the porch, he was already at the gate. I followed, running hard down the driveway. Cats bounded alongside me.

Henry glanced over his shoulder, his eyes glinting red in the shadows. I almost slipped, went down—and he was there in a heartbeat, holding me up.

“Steven must have gone home,” he hissed.

“Why?” I asked, even as Henry dragged me to the gate. “Why would he do that?”

“To warn our parents, to make certain the fence is locked. Just in case those creatures don’t follow us here. On his own, Dad always left the gate open at night. Steven and I were the ones who made certain it was shut.”

“You should have told them the truth,” I muttered. “I should have.”

“They wouldn’t have listened.” Instead of fumbling with the lock and chain, Henry climbed the fence, straddled the top—and reached down to pull me bodily over. I held the shotgun tight across my chest. Cats followed, over and under.

I was ready when I hit the ground, my finger on the trigger. Listening for monsters in the dark. I heard nothing. Not a breath, or cough, or the dragging slough of bellies on the road.

We ran. Henry was faster than me, but I did not tire. Cats raced at my side. I lost count of them. They had never left the land before this night, and I did not know why, now, they came with me. The wind was soft. So was the night, and the light of stars behind thin veils of gathering clouds. Henry was pale and his legs so quick—just a blur.

I heard the screams a long time before we reached the farm. Henry made a strangled sound and burst ahead of me. I lost sight of him in moments. Somewhere distant, that dog was barking. I ran harder. I could hear the roar of my blood, and feel it pulsing like fire beneath my skin. My wrist throbbed. So did my fingers.

I felt more heat when I finally saw the Bontrager farm. Real fire, licking the shadows, climbing wild up the sides of the barn. Horses were screaming, and so were children. I could hear those young, shrill voices, and part of me kept waiting for them to cut out in the same way Pete-Pete had, the same way I kept expecting my neighbor’s dog to stop barking, strangled and choking. Caught. Dead.

The gate stood open. Blood pooled beside the road, trailing into a smear that covered the broken concrete toward the woods. I glanced at it but did not slow. Smoke cut across me, burning my eyes and lungs. I rubbed my tearing eyes, coughing, searching out those screaming children.

Something large came at me. All I saw were ragged remnants of clothes and a bloated white belly—but that was enough. I braced myself and fired the shotgun. The boom was thunderous, and I turned my face as hot blood sprayed across my body. Some got on my lips. I scrubbed my mouth with the back of my hand and skirted the writhing mass of white flesh bleeding out on the ground in front of me.

I found the children behind the farmhouse, near the open doors of the storm cellar. Doors, blocked by hulking creatures with curved spines and odd joints that kept them low to the ground, bellies and knuckles dragging. Others drifted near, but these were upright, closer in appearance to the men they had been. Pale, puffy, with holes for eyes. Feces covered their naked bodies. I could smell it, even with the smoke.

Rachel stood with her three little girls—sobbing, all of them—holding that ax in her shaking hands. Samuel lay in the dirt at her feet, bleeding from a head wound. He kept trying to stand, but his legs wouldn’t work. He looked dazed, terrified.

But the creatures were not staring at them. Their focus was on Henry.

He stood so still, barefoot in the dirt. Firelight made his face shimmer golden, and the red in his eyes was more animal than man. More demon than animal.

“Come away,” he said to them. “Kill me first.”

“And me,” I whispered, tightening my grip on the shotgun. “Don’t lose your chance.”

The creatures hesitated, swaying—until one of them, upright and shaped like a man—made a low rasping moan and looked straight at me. I knew that pitted gaze. I had stared into it this afternoon, and years before: that heavy, hungry gaze, and that hungry, searching mouth. I gritted my teeth, gripping the gun so tight my fingers hurt.

Finish what you started, I thought at the creature, and took a deliberate step back. You know what you want.

I stepped away again, lowering the shotgun. Playing bait. Cats pressed against my legs, growling. Henry slid toward me, his hands open at his sides. Neither of us looked away from the creatures—monsters, once-men—still men, trapped in those bodies, with those instincts that continued to be murderous and hateful.

But I thought our distraction would work. I was certain of it. Until Rachel moved.

It should have been nothing. She lowered the ax, so slowly; but the blade flashed in the firelight and one of the creatures at the cellar door snapped its jaws at her. She flinched, crying out—and her little girls’ sobs broke into startled screams.

Everything shifted, twisted—monsters, turning inward, toward them—all those glittering teeth and long fingernails, those bloated, rippling faces with those tongues that protruded from stinking mouths to lick the rotting edges. I never saw Henry move, but he suddenly stood between his mother and a sharp hand—his teeth even sharper as he leaned in and ripped out the throat of the creature. I ran to help him, cats swarming ahead of me—leaping upon those awful bodies to tear at them with their claws. I heard screams—not human—and jammed my shotgun against a shit-encrusted stomach. I pulled the trigger.

Blood drenched me, and guts. I didn’t look. I moved on, reaching into the fanny pack for shells. My hands were hot, slippery.

I loaded the shotgun, glancing up in time to see Henry stand over his wounded father and punch his fist through a distended chest, his hand disappearing through broken ribs and emerging beside a curved spine. The creature screamed, flailing backward as blood poured from the wound. I heard a sucking sound as Henry yanked free. He stood there, so calm—and slowly, deliberately, licked his arm clean. I wondered if he knew what he was doing. His expression was monstrous—totally, utterly, merciless.

And I didn’t care. I loved him for it.

I turned, shotgun jammed against my shoulder, ready to fire. But the monsters were retreating, staggering toward the front gate. I ran after them, skidding on gravel, and shot one in the back. I tried to shoot another, but missed.

Henry didn’t seem to notice. He knelt beside his father. Samuel could barely hold up his head, and his eyes were dazed, wild. I wondered how he had gone years without acknowledging that anything was wrong beyond the borders of his land, when even others in his community had warned him to be careful at night. His only excuse was those monsters—those changed men—had never been consistent. Weeks could go by without seeing one.

I surveyed the yard. Nothing else seemed a threat. Cats sat in the dirt, fur raised. Growls rumbled from their throats. Corpses everywhere, and the air stank. Rachel dragged her daughters close as she crouched beside Samuel, but she stared at Henry and not her husband.

“You’re alive,” she whispered to him, and I could not tell if that was fear or wonder in her voice.

He gave her a helpless look, marred by the blood around his mouth, on his clothing and hands. “I’m not…” he began, and then stopped, looking past his mother, at me. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

Rachel looked down. Samuel stirred, pushing weakly at Henry.

“Get away,” he mumbled. “Oh my God. Get away.”

Henry stared at him and then stood. I moved close, and when his hand sought mine, I gave it to him. Rachel saw, and looked at me, deep and long.

“Steven,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Rachel replied softly, and her face crumpled. “He’s gone. They took him first. He tried to fight, and they dragged him away. And then… they came for us.”

I knew that some of her despair had nothing to do with her missing son. “Rachel. It’s not like before. It’s over.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she whispered harshly, clutching her belly, finally meeting my gaze. “I recognized him. He might have… changed… but I know him.”

Him. I leaned back, unable to break her gaze, unable to stop remembering her face, years ago, ravaged with cuts and bruises. Same as mine. Mirrors should have disappeared with the rest of technology. I had buried two of them behind my barn, unable to stand seeing my eyes every time I walked down the hall or entered my bedroom.

“We’ll find him,” Henry said, tugging on my hand. “We’ll bring him—”

He stopped before he said home, but Rachel gave him a sharp look. Samuel seemed barely conscious.

“No,” said his mother, wrapping an arm around her daughters, all of whom clung to one another, weeping quietly. “No, don’t bring him here if you find him.”

Henry’s jaw tightened. Rachel tore herself from her daughters and stood, staring up at her son, searching his eyes with cold resolve. “It doesn’t matter that I love you. It doesn’t matter that I would forgive you anything. There’s no place for you here. Any of you.” Rachel looked at me. “You won’t be free if you stay.”

I touched my throat. Felt like it was too tight to breathe. I wanted to protest, fight, argue—but I couldn’t even speak. Rachel swayed, and turned away. Henry squeezed my hand. Staring at his mother.

We left them. I could hear distant shouts, the sounds of horses. Help, coming. The fire would be visible for miles. Even the nighttime reputation of this stretch of road wouldn’t be enough to stop the neighbors.

Henry and I stood at the front gate, staring at the trail of blood that led into the woods.

“He could be dead,” Henry said. “You should stay here.”

I reloaded the shotgun. It took all my concentration. I wanted to say something brave, but couldn’t speak. So I looked at Henry and he looked at me, and when I lifted my face to him, he kissed my cheek and then my mouth. Cats rubbed against our legs.

We entered the woods.

IT HAD BEEN three years. Maybe I expected snakes instead of vines, or razor blades in place of leaves, but everything that touched me was as it should be: a soft tickle of brush, the snag of thorns on my clothing and skin. I was almost blind in the darkness, and I was too loud. I crashed through the woods, crunching leaves and breaking branches, like a wounded creature, breath rasping. Henry moved in perfect silence, and only when he touched me did I know he was close.

“I can smell my brother,” he whispered; and then: “I wish I’d had more time to explain.”

“You had years.” I touched trees to keep from tripping. “Time runs out. When I saw you tonight, I couldn’t imagine how you had pretended for so long to be like everyone else. And I don’t know how they were so blind not to see that you’d changed.”

“Easier to believe,” he said quietly. “Easier to pretend than face the truth. Even when I had you and Steven helping me adjust to my new… instincts… I kept thinking I could be something else. If I prayed hard enough, if I stayed with the old ways.”

My fingernails scraped bark, and I felt heat travel through my skin into my blood, simmering into quiet fire—a sensation similar to knowledge, the same that guided me when blessing fences.

“The world is remaking itself,” I found myself saying. “Men die, forests swallow the cities and bones. And what remains… changes. Life always changes.”

“Not like this,” Henry replied. “Not like us.”

You’re wrong, I wanted to tell him, but heard a low, distant cough. All the calm I had been fighting for disappeared. I reached down, nearly blind, and cats trailed under my shaking hand.

When we found the clearing, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see well. I felt the open space, I looked up and saw stars, and my teeth began chattering. I gritted them together, trying to stop, but the chills that racked me were violent, sickening. Henry grabbed me around the waist and pressed his lips into my hair.

“I’m here,” he murmured. “Think about what you told my mother. It’s different this time.”

I squeezed shut my eyes. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to come back to this spot.”

“It can’t be the same one.”

I pushed Henry away. “I shouldn’t have visited you that night. I should have run and hid when I heard your mother screaming.”

He froze. So did I. And then he moved again, reaching out, fingers grazing my arm. I staggered backward, clutching the shotgun to my chest.

“Amanda,” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed, ashamed. “I’m so sorry I said that.”

But even as I spoke, my throat burned, aching, and when I opened my mouth to draw in a breath, a sob cut free, soft, broken, cracking me open to the heart. I bent over, in such pain, shuddering so hard I could not breathe. Henry touched me. I squeezed shut my eyes, fighting for control. Not now. Not now.

But my mouth opened and words vomited out, whispers, my voice croaking. “When they saw me, when they chased me into the woods, you and Steven shouldn’t have followed. You knew… you knew you were outnumbered, that they had weapons. If you had just stayed behind—”

“No,” he said hoarsely, and then again, stronger: “No.”

His hands wrapped around my waist, and then my chest, and he leaned over my body in a warm, unflinching embrace. His mouth pressed against my ear. “I couldn’t protect my mother and I couldn’t protect you. But I had to try. Nothing else mattered.”

I sensed movement on the other side of the clearing. Cats hissed. So did I, struggling to straighten. Henry let go, but stayed close.

Bodies detached from the dense shadows, some on two feet, others crawling over the ground, bellies tearing the undergrowth. I raised the shotgun, but did not fire. One of them separated from the others: tall, bloated head, those black eyes.

I knew him. Rachel had known him. She was right—there was something about the shape of his face, the lean of his body. Still the same. Still him. Leader of the pack.

The woods were so quiet around us. A dull silence, like a muted bell. I expected to see a flash of light, or feel that old fire in my veins, but nothing happened. I expected to feel fear, too, but an odd calm stole over me—like magic, all my uncertainty melting into my hands holding the shotgun, down my legs into the soles of my feet. I took a deep breath and tasted clean air.

I heard a muffled groan. Henry flinched. “Steven. Give him to us.”

No one moved. I forced myself to take a step and then another, certain I would trip or freeze with fear. But I didn’t. I made it across the clearing, Henry and the cats close at my side, those small, sleek bodies that crowded into the clearing, like swift ghosts.

I stopped in front of him. Just out of arm’s reach. That lipless mouth opened and closed, and his black eyes never blinked. I wasn’t certain he had lids. Nor did I question why I could suddenly see him so clearly, as though light shone upon his rotting face.

My finger tightened on the trigger. I let out my breath slowly. My heartbeat was loud. I could feel my pulse, my blood, bones beneath my skin. But I still did not fire, and the creature in front of me stared and stared, motionless. I tried to remember what he had looked like when he was still a man, but that face was a blur. Dead now. All of us had died a little, and become something new.

I heard another groan. Henry strode past me. Bodies stepped in his path. He did not stop. I heard a snarl and a ripping sound, followed by splashing. I smelled blood. The creature in front of me never moved, though the others behind him swayed unsteadily.

“Amanda,” Henry called out hoarsely.

I tightened my grip on the shotgun, and sidled sideways, never taking my gaze from the leader, the once-man. A rasping growl rose from his throat, but that was the only threat; and none of the others came near me.

Henry stood beside a massive tree, a giant with a girth that reminded me of a small mountain rising fat and rough from the earth. Roots curled, thick as my forearm—cradling a body.

Steven. He was pale, wasted—and bleeding. So much blood, dripping down his skin into the soil, as though he was feeding the tree. Maybe he was. I heard a sucking sound in the roots, and when Henry bent to pick up his brother, I grabbed his shoulder, stopping him.

“Watch our backs,” I murmured, all the hairs on my neck standing up as I knelt beside Steven and set down my shotgun. The boy’s chest jerked with shallow rasping breaths, his fingers twitching in a similar rhythm. His wrists had been cut open, as had his chest and inner thigh. Cats sniffed his body, ears pressed flat.

My palms tingled. I almost touched him, but stopped at the last minute and laid my hand against the tree. I didn’t know what I was doing, or why, but it felt right.

Or not. A shock cut through me, like static on wool—but with more pain, deep inside my skull. I tried to pull away, but my muscles froze. And when I attempted to call for Henry, my throat locked.

This is what you want, whispered a voice, reverberating from my brain to my bones. This is what you need.

A torrent of images flashed through my mind: open human mouths screaming, echoing in the air of stone streets bordered by towers made of steel and glass; men and women staggering, falling, slumped in stiff, decaying piles as blood and rotting juices flowed between cracks in the road, or in grass, upon the roots of trees that grew in shady patches. Bodily fluids, watering the earth.

Heat exploded in my chest. I could move again. I grabbed awkwardly at Steven’s clothes, hauling him off those roots. Henry helped. My muscles were weak. So was my stomach. I leaned sideways, gagging. Cats pressed close, dozens, surrounding me.

“Amanda,” he said.

I shook my head. “Use your shirt to wrap his wounds. We need to stop the bleeding.”

He did as I asked, but glanced over his shoulder at the pale bloated bodies waiting so still in the shadows. “What about them?”

I hardly heard his question. I stared at the spot where Steven had been sprawled—a cradle made of roots—and suffered the weight of all those trees bearing down on me, as though full of watchful eyes, and watchful souls, and mouths that could speak. Steven’s blood was invisible against the bark, but I felt its presence.

Something changed us that night, I thought, and those once-men stirred as though they heard, coughs and quiet groans making me cold. They had laughed, before. Laughed and shouted and sung little ditties, and made hissing sounds between their teeth. Horror swelled inside me—mind-numbing, screaming horror that I was here, with them, again—but I fought it down, struggling to regain that spectral calm that had stolen over me.

Henry touched my shoulder. “We can go.”

Steven hung over his shoulder like a dirty rag doll. I picked up the shotgun but did not stand. I held up my finger. “Give me blood.”

He hesitated, glancing wildly at the monsters surrounding us. I knew what he was thinking. Any minute now they would attack. Any minute, they would try to rip us to pieces and feed on our bodies; as in life, so now in this twilight death. I didn’t understand why they waited—though I had a feeling.

“Please,” I whispered.

Henry’s jaw tightened, his gaze cold, hard—but he leaned forward and bit my finger. Blood welled. I touched the tree.

And went blind. Lost in total darkness. I could feel the sharp tangle of vines beneath me, and hear Henry breathing—listened, with a sharp chill, to wet, rasping coughs—but those sounds, sensations, might as well have been part of another world.

Another world, whispered a voice. We are more than we were.

My finger throbbed. I bowed my head. Pressure built in my stomach, rising into my throat—nausea, but worse, like my guts were going to void through my mouth.

Instead of vomit, my vision returned. I saw those dead bodies again, endless mountains of corpses sprawled on stone streets, and the sun—the sun rising between towers, glowing with crisp golden light. Beautiful morning, with clouds of flies buzzing over blood that was still not dry.

We were born from this, said the voice, which I felt now in my teeth, in my spine and ribs. Blood that killed made us live.

Time shifted. Again, I witnessed blood, and the fluids from those decaying bodies flow and settle, feeding the roots of grass and weeds, and the trees that grew from stone inside the dead city. I felt a pulse sink beneath the streets into soil and spread. I felt heat.

A rushing sensation surrounded me—as though I was being thrust forward, like a giant fist was grinding itself between my shoulder blades. Faster, faster, and all around me, inside me, I felt a surge of growth—my veins, bursting beyond my skin, branching like roots, bleeding blood into the darkness.

Blood, that became a forest.

A forest that swallowed a city.

Many forests, I thought. Every city swallowed.

And the blood spread, whispered the voice. The blood changed us all.

As it changed you.

I slammed down on my hands and knees, as though dropped from a great distance. Fire throbbed beneath my skin, a white light burning behind my eyes. I remembered that night, naked and bleeding, on the ground—Henry screaming my name, Steven sobbing, both of them beaten bloody—and I remembered, I remembered a terrible heat. I remembered thinking the men had set me on fire, that I would look down and find my skin burning with flames.

We tasted all your blood, whispered the voice. We tasted a change that needed waking.

So wake. And feed us again.

I opened my eyes. I could not see at first, but the shadows coalesced, and became men and trees, and small furred bodies, growling quietly. My hand was still pressed to the blood-slick roots of the tree, and something hummed in my ears. I felt… out of body. Drifting. When I looked at Henry, I saw blood—and when I looked at the monsters who had been monsters, too, while they were men, I also saw blood. Blood infected; blood changed by something I still didn’t understand.

The trees are alive, I thought, and felt like a fool.

The leader of the pack shuffled forward and dragged his clawed fingers over his face with a gape-mouthed groan. He cut himself, so deeply that blood ran down his skin and dripped from his bloated cheek. I heard it hit the ground with a sound as loud as a bell. And I imagined, beneath my hand, a pleasurable warmth rise from the bark of the tree.

“Henry,” I said raggedly, without breaking the gaze of the pack leader, the first and last man who had held me down, so many years ago. “Henry, put Steven down. You’re going to need your hands.”

“Amanda,” he whispered, but I ignored him, and picked up the shotgun. I settled it against my shoulder, my finger caressing the trigger, and looked deep into those black, lidless eyes.

Feed us again, I heard, rising through me as though from the earth itself. All we want is to be fed again.

I hated that voice. I hated it so badly, but I could deny it. Like instinct, stronger than knowledge; like my blood on the fence or Henry burned by sunlight. We had been changed in ways I would never understand, but could only follow.

“You know what you’re doing,” I said to the creature, which stood perfectly still, bleeding, staring, waiting. “You know what you want.”

What it had wanted, all these years, I realized. Living half-dead, hungry for peace, listening to voices that wanted to be fed. Like me, but in a different way.

So I pulled the trigger. And finished it.

I NEVER DID buy those pigs.

I found someone outside the Amish who would trade with me, and bargained for horses, good strong Clydesdales, almost seventeen hands high. Four of them. I had to travel a week to reach the man who bred them, and all he wanted was four boxes of bullets.

We left at the end of summer. No one bothered us, but no one talked to us, either. We were alone on the hill, though people watched from a distance as Steven and I took down the fence, board by board, and used each rail to build the walls of two wagons. Real walls, real roofs, windows with solid shutters. I had seen abandoned RVs, and always admired the idea of a movable home. Even if it was something I had never imagined needing. What we built was crude, but it would keep the sunlight out.

We left at the end of summer. I wrote a note and left it on the last post standing. My land, free for the taking.

I drove one wagon, while Steven handled the other. One of them was filled with food—everything we could store and can—and the other held Henry and our few belongings. The goats followed without much prodding. Cats were good at herding. When asked politely, anyway.

Henry rode in my wagon. He had a bed behind the wall at my back, and a hollow pipe he spoke through when he wanted to talk. After a day or two, I tied a long red ribbon around my wrist and trailed it through the pipe. Henry would tug on it when he wanted me to imagine our hands touching.

“Do you dream of them?” he asked one day, his voice muffled as it traveled through sawed-off steel. It was sunny and warm, and birds trilled, voices tangled in sweet wild music. Pasture land surrounded us, but beyond the tall grass I saw the dark edge of a forest. I looked at it as I would a narrowed eye—with caution and an edge of fear.

We had traveled more than a hundred miles, which I knew because we followed old roads on my father’s maps, and we calculated distances every evening around the fire.

“I dream,” I said. “Tell me you don’t.”

“I can’t,” he said quietly. “I still taste their blood, and it makes me afraid because I feel nothing. No regret. No sorrow. I pray all the time to feel sorrow, but I don’t. My heart is cold when I remember murdering them. And then I feel… hungry.”

Sometimes I felt hungry, too, but in a different way. I hungered to be back inside the forest, bleeding for the trees, hoping that they would give me knowledge, again. More answers. Not just why we had been changed, but why we had been changed in so many different ways. I told myself that the virus that had caused the Big Death had affected more than humans. I told myself that maybe we had all been infected, but some had lived—lived, ripe for some new evolution. I told myself I was a fool, that it didn’t matter, that I was alive, starting a new life. I told myself, too, that I was a killer.

I tugged on the ribbon and he tugged back. “Do you feel cold when you think of protecting your parents and Steven, or me?”

“No,” he said. “Never.”

“Then you’re fine,” I replied. “I love you.”

Henry was silent a long time. “Does that mean you forgive me?”

I closed my eyes and pulled the ribbon again. “There was nothing, ever, to forgive.”

From the second wagon, behind us, I heard a shout. Steven. I pulled hard on the reins, untied the ribbon from my wrist, and jumped down. The cats that had been riding on the bench beside me followed. I took the shotgun.

Steven stood on the wagon bench, still holding the reins. Fading scars crisscrossed his face and throat, and his bared wrists were finally looking less savaged. Pale, gaunt, but alive. He still wore his plain clothes and straw hat. Unable to let go. If he was anything like his brother, it would be years—or maybe never. His gaze, as he stared over my head, was farseeing.

“Someone will be coming soon,” he said. “Someone important.”

I stared down the road. All I saw was a black bird, winging overhead. A crow. I watched it, an odd humming sound in my ears. Cats crowded the road, surrounding the bleating goats. I couldn’t count all their numbers—twenty or thirty, I thought. We seemed to pick up new ones every couple of days.

One of the windows in my wagon cracked open. Henry said, “Are we in trouble?”

“Not yet,” I replied, but tightened my grip on the gun. “Steven?”

“We don’t need to hide,” Steven murmured, staring up at the crow; staring, though I wasn’t entirely certain he saw the bird. “She’s coming.”

I didn’t question him. Steven had become more enigmatic since that night in the woods—that second, bloody, night. Or maybe he had stopped fighting the change that had come over him all those years before.

Clear day, but after a while I heard thunder, a roar. Faint at first, and then stronger, ripping through the air. I couldn’t place it at first, though finally I realized that it reminded me of the military caravans. A gas engine.

A black object appeared at the end of the road, narrow and compact. Sunlight glittered on chrome. It took me a moment to recognize the vehicle. I had seen only pictures. I couldn’t remember its name, though I knew it had two wheels, like a bicycle. And that it was fast.

None of the cats scattered. I steadied myself as the machine slowed, stopped. Dug in my heels. Didn’t matter that Steven seemed unafraid. I had no trust in the unknown.

A woman straddled the thing. Dark hair, wild eyes. Her jeans and shirt looked new, which was almost as odd as her gas-powered machine. I saw no weapons, though—and was comforted by the sharp look she gave me. As though she, too, had no trust.

“Your name is Amanda,” she said.

I held steady. Made no reply. Watched, waited. The woman frowned, but only with her eyes; a faint smile quirked the corner of her mouth.

“I’m Maggie,” she added, and tapped her forehead. “I saw you coming.”

Steven jumped down from the wagon. I stepped in front of him, but he tried to push past me and choked out, “Are you like us?”

High in the sky, the crow cawed. Maggie glanced up at the bird, and her smile softened before she returned her gaze to me and the boy.

“No,” she said. “You’re new blood. I’m from something… older.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” I told her.

She shook her head, rubbing her jaw. “It’ll take time to explain, but there are others like you. Changed people. I’ve seen them in my dreams. I’m trying to find as many as I can, to bring them someplace safe.”

“Safe,” echoed Henry, from behind the wagon door. Maggie glanced sideways, but didn’t seem surprised to hear someone speaking. The crow swooped close and landed on her shoulder. Cats made broken chattering sounds. Golden eyes locked on the bird.

“Something is coming,” said Maggie, reaching around to place a cautious hand on the crow’s sleek back. “I don’t know what. But we need to be together. As many of us as possible.”

I stared, feeling the cut of her words. Cut, like truth. I knew it in my blood. But I held my ground and said, “You’re crazy.”

“Amanda,” Henry said, and I edged sideways to the back of the wagon. “Wife,” he said again, more softly, for my ears only. “What did we run from before, and what are we running toward now?”

“Possibilities,” I whispered, pressing my brow against the hammered fence rail, dotted with my blood. I touched the wooden heart hanging from a delicate chain around my neck. “All those frightening possibilities.”

“I was never scared of loving you,” he murmured. “But I was a coward with the rest. I don’t want to be that man again.”

And I didn’t want to be that woman. I scratched my fingers against the wagon door and turned back to look at Steven, who gave me a slow, solemn nod. I stared past him at the forest—silent and waiting, and full of power. Power it had given us—and maybe others. I leaned against the wagon, feeling Henry on the other side of the wall, strong in the darkness.

My blood hummed.