Michael straightened and brushed more sweat from his forehead with the back of an arm. He was shirtless. Sweat glistened on his pale torso, the diffused early morning sunlight making him look like a ghost caught in its slanting rays. Marcy watched him and felt a stir of libido. He was slim and reasonably good-looking, at least compared to the rest of them. And he was smarter than the others. Too smart, maybe. Unlike the rest of them, he didn’t just accept her every pronouncement as gospel. But maybe she could bring him more firmly under her thumb if she fuc ked him.
He looked at her and frowned, seeing the glint in her eyes. He shifted his eyes away from her, studied some vague point in the middle distance. Marcy supposed he’d mistaken her expression for something other than ardor. Which was understandable. He was very afraid of her. They all were at this point.
Marcy moved closer to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Is there something you want to say to me, Michael? Something that worries you…”
Michael jerked at her touch. She could feel the tension thrumming through his body. “I just think this is a rotten idea.”
She squeezed his shoulder and moved another step closer. “You shouldn’t worry. Everything will be okay, I promise.”
He was shaking now. “No. I really don’t understand why we’re doing this. We should’ve called 911 last night. Or maybe just taken Sonia to the ER our selves.”
Marcy didn’t reply to this right away. She was too enthralled by the live-wire trembling of the boy’s body, which seemed to grow more pronounced by the moment. She moved her hand from his shoulder to the small of his back. Michael drew in a sharp, involuntary breath. Marcy leaned against him and slipped her other arm around his back. A small sound that might have been a whimper emerged from his mouth.
Marcy smiled. “Are you a virgin, Michael?”
The sound he produced this time was louder, somewhere between a moan and a whimper. “I’m…that’s…what’s that got to do with anything?”
He abruptly broke out of her embrace and stalked away to a point several feet away from her. He pointed a shaking finger at her. “We can’t do this. It’s wrong. Sonia deserves better than being buried in the fucking woods. We need to let someone know what happened to her. We don’t even have to tell the truth, Marcy. We’ll get rid of that bitch you had us grab first, dump her in this hole, and everyone will figure Sonia had some kind of hemorrhage.”
He lowered the accusing finger, but his eyes remained bright and glowering.
Marcy put a hand to her face, rubbed at her tired eyes with thumb and forefinger. A dull ache had flared behind her forehead. Her own rage was building, rising up within her like a black storm cloud. She fought to keep a grip on her emotions. Nothing good could come of a fight with Michael. Things were too precarious as they stood. On an objective level, she knew the course of action she’d chosen wasn’t a smart or rational one, but instinct had driven her down this path. This was the way she wanted things to be. The way she needed them to be. It felt like the first step down the road to her ultimate destiny (though she had no clue what that might be).
So fuck it.
Michael would not ruin this for her. No one would.
She lowered her hand and saw Michael still glaring at her. Her own expression hardened, the corners of her mouth curling slightly in a humorless smile. Michael’s brow furrowed. His eyes reflected fear.
Good.
She darted toward him, closing the distance between them before he could even consider retreat. She drove a fist into the softest part of his stomach, making him splutter and double over. She crashed the same fist against the side of his head and he pitched backward onto his ass, landing at the side of the open, empty grave. He instinctively sought to brace himself, but one of his grasping hands reached into the hole and offset his balance. He tumbled into the hole and landed with a thump at the bottom. Marcy picked up one of the shovels and moved to the edge of the hole. She turned the shovel around, holding it like a baseball bat while she waited for the boy to climb back out. She heard him sit up and groan. She tightened her grip on the handle.
Michael exhaled heavily and groaned again. “Jesus, Marcy…that was pretty fucking uncalled for. I’m only trying to make you see some goddamned sense.”
Marcy made her voice soft and placating. “I know. And I’m sorry. I got carried away. Now come up here so we can talk things out. Maybe you’re right about everything. Maybe I’m being overemotional and crazy about things.”
Michael grunted. “Ya think. Jesus, but I’m glad to hear you talking sense for a change. Okay, I’m coming up now.”
She heard him shifting position; then he got to his feet with a groan of effort. He blinked and frowned at the sight of Marcy holding the shovel. He remained perplexed as she lifted her arms and brought the shovel blade around. It was as if he simply couldn’t fathom the idea of Marcy doing this to him. Only at the last possible instant did it occur to him to lunge away from the arc of the blade. He almost made it, but the tip of the shovel blade clipped the side of his face and sent him spinning back down into the hole.
Marcy jumped in after him, planting a foot at either side of his prone form. Michael groaned and looked up at her through a mist of tears. He still couldn’t believe what was happening to him. The dumb bastard. Marcy adjusted her grip on the shovel handle, taking it by the base and holding it in front of her like a jackhammer. Michael squealed and tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. The back of his head connected with moist earth and he stopped moving. His mouth opened to issue a last plea for mercy.
Then Marcy squatted and drove the shovel blade into his throat. A fountain of blood erupted around the dirty blade, and Marcy watched the gory cascade with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. Michael bucked beneath her and flailed at the shovel handle. He had to know he was doomed by now, but he was fighting her with everything he had. She leaned forward and used upper body leverage to drive the blade deeper into his throat. The grind of steel on bone made her stomach lurch, but she kept bearing down and finally Michael died.
She swallowed hard and let go of the shovel handle. Her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow. She stared at Michael’s very still face and tried to make herself feel something other than numbness. The strange positive buzz of before seemed to have at least temporarily deserted her. She stared into the boy’s unseeing eyes and tried to discern some hint of the human being he’d been, but whatever he’d possessed that had made him uniquely Michael was gone forever.
And she’d caused that. She was a killer. She thought about the bum in Overton Park the previous summer, recalling vividly the way he’d dropped and not moved after the second blow to his head with the heavy wine bottle. They’d taken his booze and pitiful handful of pocket change. Marcy remembered the way the dark blood had oozed from the gash at the back of his head to stain the grass beneath him. She was almost positive he hadn’t been breathing when they’d left him. There’d never been any verification of the homeless man’s death. But Marcy’s gut told her she’d become a murderer for the first time that summer evening.
This was different in so many meaningful ways. The old wino had been little more than a walking casualty anyway, a ruined shell of a man no one could possibly care about, as evidenced by the silence of the local media on the matter. It was as if he’d never existed at all. But she’d known Michael since childhood. Had watched him grow up and struggle to fit in before gravitating to her little clique of outcasts. She knew his likes and dislikes. His favorite bands and books. She knew each member of his family by name. In a way killing Michael was sort of like killing family.