THEY PRESSED THROUGH the valley in the midday heat. The land was deadly quiet. They, too, walked in silence, to conserve energy and because Micah rarely had much to say. They came to a stream. The water was clear but foul, burdened with an aftertaste that slipped down the backs of their throats like toxic oil. But they drank and gagged and drank some more, as they were parched and there was no telling when the chance would come again.
Gray clouds massed against the horizon, ushering in an early twilight. Minerva’s feet ached. Blisters had swollen and burst on her heels; she could feel the warm blister broth soaking into her socks. She had not eaten since yesterday, but her appetite had deserted her, replaced in her stomach by a restless fear.
The valley bellied into a basin studded with cottonwoods. They moved through the waist-high grass, pushing the dry thatches aside with their hands. Not one cricket clung to a single blade. So terrible, Minerva thought, to be the only living things here. A person forgets how she is surrounded by life all day long. Spiders making webs, mice scurrying behind walls, raccoons feasting in your garbage cans, fruit flies colonizing your bananas. And while it could be annoying to rebag your torn trash sacks or sweep up mouse shit, at least it was normal. Otherwise, it felt like you were living on the desolate surface of an uninhabited planet.
“There,” said Micah.
Minerva followed his finger up the spine of a hill. Tracking that rise, about a mile distant, sat the dark outline of what was clearly a homestead.
“Quickly,” Micah said. “Before it rains.”
27
ELLEN BELLHAVEN SPENT the morning at Little Heaven’s glassworks. She melted the borosilicate beads, added tints, rolled and snipped it and worked the molten glass into shapes of her liking. Nobody troubled her; the Little Heavenites had bigger concerns than unauthorized use of the glassworks. The busywork kept one part of Ellen’s mind occupied while the other parts spun off on crazed orbits. She put her hands in service of small tasks to dull the riot inside her head.
Everyone here was so damn… odd. Ellen had known Bible bashers; they could be grating, those sideways looks confirming their belief that Ellen already had one foot in the eternal flames of hell. There was also this sense—implicit, but as yet never stated—that they believed she and the other “outsiders” had brought an indefinable sickness to Little Heaven. A curse. But the thing was, Little Heaven had been ill before they had shown up. And it was only getting worse.
First there was that incident with the kids and the shrew. Then the thing in the woods she and Micah had seen. Within the compound, all sense of oversight seemed to have vanished. Parents barely minded their children, who were free to run amok so long as they didn’t go into the woods. Nobody had gone in there unaccompanied since Eli’s disappearance. It was as if the threat—and there was a threat at Little Heaven, though Ellen couldn’t pinpoint what it was—had not registered. The Little Heavenites continued on in their own obedient way. Narcotized, as if a powerful gas were being pumped up from the ground that made them accept whatever terribleness was coming.
She glanced up to see Cyril Neeps stepping into the glassworks. Tall and ferret-like, with a canine tooth that jagged down to divot his lower lip.
“Well now,” he said breezily. “What do we have here?”
She felt momentarily reduced under his predatory gaze, no bigger than a grasshopper or some other bug. Then she set her jaw. Fuck this guy.
“Just keeping busy. Nobody seems to be using this place.”
Neeps nodded cheerily, but she’d seen this kind of thing—false sunniness hiding the glint of a blade.
“Sure, yep… that’s about the size of it.” He smiled. “Still, shouldn’t you have asked permission first? I mean, you didn’t buy all this stuff, did you?”
He waited for an answer. When she didn’t say anything, he dismissively waved his hand. “Enjoying yourself, are you?” He laughed in a way that encouraged her to join in, although nothing he said had been remotely funny.
“Like I said,” Ellen told him, “just filling time.”
Neeps cocked his head. Assaying the steel in her spine. She stared back equitably. She wasn’t scared. It had been a long time since a man looked at her that way. She’d be damned if she would ever be scared of the Cyril Neepses of this world again.
“Filling time, huh?” His smile turned wolfish. “I can think of better ways to fill it. I’m kind of an expert at filling… time.”
Unflinchingly, she returned his smile. “That so?
He hitched his thumbs in his belt. “Oh, that’s a fact.”
“What about your friend? He an expert in anything?”
“Who, Virg? He’s an expert at sticking his thumb up his rear end. That, and following me around like a lost puppy. You could say I’m the brains of our particular operation.”
“Then Lord help you.”
Cyril’s smile faded. Something dark and hungry passed over his face.
Ellen said, “I can fill my own time, but thanks a bunch.”
Neeps’s fingers diddled along the hilt of a knife sheathed on his belt.
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing about women I’ve learned. Sometimes they need a good filling… of their time. So it’s just a matter of filling it for them until they come round to the sport of it.”
Ellen withdrew the glassblowing pole from the kiln and balanced it on the anvil. Its tip glowed white-hot. It was pointed at Neeps, right around crotch level.
“Glassblowing is my little getaway,” she said, not breaking eye contact. “Do you understand, Cyril?” She spun the pole on the anvil. Around and around. “Solitude is important for any of us, wouldn’t you say?”
Neeps stared at the glowing tip as if mesmerized—
“So why don’t you make like a tree and get the fuck outta here, Cy?”
Neeps’s eyes snapped up to her. His lips curled in a sneer. He seemed to be debating taking matters to the next level, the physical one, but something in Ellen’s face—or the searing metal pointed at his balls—prevented it.
He lip-farted. “I was trying to throw you a bone. A pity poke, plain and simple. To tell it straight, you don’t merit a good fuckin’,” he said with sunny good cheer. “I take one look at that burn all down your face and my pecker just wilts. Christ, what a sight! Face all messed up like that.” He shoved his palms toward her like a toddler pushing away a plate of peas. “Your head looks like a marshmallow someone dropped in a fire.”
“You sure do know how to charm a lady,” Ellen said.
“Maybe you got something going with that one-eyed mute you chum around with. Or the skinny bitch? You’re a slit slurper, that it? You’re as frigid as one, that’s for damn certain.”
“If that helps you sleep better.”
Cyril screwed the toe of his boot into the dirt. “I’ve been watching you. If you take one step out of line, any of you, I will happily…” He checked his threat. “You’re trespassing. So mind your p’s and q’s, hmm?”
“Good-bye, Cyril.”
“Good-fucking-bye, Melto,” he called over his shoulder as the door shut behind him.
NATE RAN ACROSS the woman down by the cistern outside the dry goods shed. One of the outsiders. The one with the burn on her face.