8.7 The Zombie-Ferrets Strike Back

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TINK.

I awoke to sunlight and Mara asleep in my bed. She was on her side, facing me, and breathing through her nose.

I kissed her temple. I couldn't help it.

TINK.

Crap! I thought. What time is it? Do my parents know Mara's in my bed? "Mara!" I whispered. "Hey, Mara!"

Her eyes fluttered like a startled moth. Her arms stretched toward the headboard, revealing a porcelain armpit and the side of her chest through the open nightshirt sleeve. "Mornin' sunshine."

TINK.

She froze. "What was that?"

TINK.

"The window," I said. We stood on my bed and bounced to the sill.

A.J. was fifteen feet below, waving his hands, beckoning us to the woods.

"He looks excited," Mara said.

"Doesn't this kid have parents?" I asked.

A.J. flailed his arms, gestured to the trees, then dashed into the brush.

I hopped off the bed, snatched a pair of shorts from the floor, and wiggled them under my nightshirt.

"James!" she said.

"Stay here." I opened the door, scanned the parlor to assure my family wasn't privy to the stowaway in my bed, then bolted through the room, down the stairs, out the door, and around the back of the castle.

Mara was behind me, still in her nightshirt, crunching leaves in my mother's sandals. "I'm coming with!" she said and deftly hurdled a log.

I knew it was dangerous. I knew it was stupid to let her follow. But I was happy to have her at my side.

We arrived at the clearing below our windows. No sign of A.J.

"Age!" I shouted.

"A.J.!" she yelled.

I cupped my hands around my mouth. "A--!"

"Wait!" Mara cut me short. "Look at this!"

I spun around. Floating six inches from her face was a white slipper. "What the heck?" I shuffled through a patch of ferns and stopped at her side.

"It's from my old pajamas..." she said.

The bootie was laced through a branch with fishing wire. I tore it down, branch included.

"There's more," she said, pointing deeper into the woods. It was an arm, part of the same outfit, dangling in the open air.

I grit my teeth, jumped for the fabric, and yanked it from the tree.

"Don't go, James," she said.

"I'm gonna kill that asshole." I noticed another fabric arm at the top of The Great Divide and made my way up the mound.

Mara scrambled to keep up. I tossed back the first arm, then stared down the gulch. "A.J.!" I yelled. "I'm gonna tear your face off your skull!"

I took Mara's hand. Together, we found solid footing and dodged thorny weeds and prickers. Two dangling legs led us halfway down the incline, and a frayed zipper signaled us to stop on a narrow path on the side of the bluff. The fishing wire was caked with dried worm guts; this was the first piece that A.J. hung.

CLINK.

"Now what?" Mara asked.

I glanced up the hill to see how far we came. Too far to turn back, I thought.

CLINK. It was the sound of metal on metal, not twenty feet down the path.

"Don't follow him. It's what he wants."

"I'll take care of him," I said. "You stay here. For real this time."

She nodded. "Careful, kay?"

"I'm always careful."

I followed the path to a clearing the size of my bedroom. A green ladder rose from the ground to a camouflaged deer stand strapped to an oak tree. Trent was leaning against the rungs, unarmed, a warped lid to a garbage can strapped to his chest like body armor.

Danny was kneeling at the center of the clearing. His hunting vest hung from his arms like dead, neon flesh. My old camera was on a tripod, watching me. A cat struggled to free itself from the bully's tremendous grip. It was Dorothy.

"Let her go, Danny." I stepped forward... so did Trent.

Dorothy thrashed--back arching until her ears touched her tail--then surrendered, reluctantly, to Danny's impossible hold. I saw the source of the metallic clink. In the bully's left hand, a Zippo lighter; in his right, a firecracker, stolen--no doubt--from the night we filmed the war scene.

"Danny!" I shouted, but Trent was on top of me in eight brisk stomps. He grabbed my nightshirt's collar and held me against his chest. Behind him, in the shadows between the trees, A.J. stood with his eyes on the ground.

"Age..." I said. But he didn't look up.

Without a word or chance to bargain, Danny's nose puckered against his lips. He flipped Dorothy belly-up, held her ribcage beneath his pit, and forced the firecracker into her anus. She trashed wildly, dicing his left wrist with her claws, then he lit the fuse.

I screamed. I beat my fists into Trent's chest.

Danny clenched the shrieking cat, turned his head, closed his eyes.

Behind me, Mara gasped.

*  *  *

The explosion was muffled, but the damage was clear.

Danny dropped the cat and snatched the camera by the tripod. His eyes were locked on the girl behind me, clenched in a steel scowl. "Let's go," he said to the others, then looked away and scampered into the brush.

Trent looked at Dorothy, her front paws swimming wildly above her, then back at me. I saw in his expression a glimmer of sadness as if he didn't believe Danny would actually go through with it. He released my collar, veered a wide circle around the dying cat, and ran away.

I looked past the deer stand and through the trees; A.J. was gone too.

To call an event "indescribable" usually shows the writer's lack of imagination. But how does one recall in writing the absolute decimation of a little girl? What word other than "indescribable" befits the horror in the heart of the boy who loves her? How does one use the word "shriek" to capture the sound a cat makes when it's tail is dangling by a dirt-crusted tendon?

There was no consolation, no words of encouragement I could offer as Mara scooped up her writhing cat, her arms soaking the blood from it's open rear.

I tried to touch her shoulder but she pushed me away. She clasped her hands, bowed before the cat and blood and God, and she prayed. 

"Mara..." I said.

She crossed herself. She opened her eyes and looked at the cat as if the healing-power of prayer would be instantaneous. She rubbed Dorothy's matted mane to calm her. And when it became clear that the prayer wouldn't work, she bit her lower lip, closed her eyes, and sang.

It was a simple tune, a lullaby this time, familiar, though I couldn't hear the words.

My mind pushed back the vile sight to make room for the nuance of Mara's quivering voice. In the moment, I suppose I assumed Mara was trying to sing Dorothy to sleep, but then she stopped, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to my knees. "Make it work, James," she said, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, leaping to her cheek with every blink.

"Make what work?" I asked.

"I have powers, you said. I'm special. If I'm special, how do I fix her?" She turned back, hair curtaining her face, naked knees pressing divots in the dirt. And from her lips came a soothing rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, her gentle vibrato besting Judy Garland with every note.

Mara scrunched her face as if she was bending spoons. Her hands hovered over Dorothy, stroked Dorothy, shook and shook and shook Dorothy as she poured her special powers--the best she knew how--into healing her pet.

Her voice never wavered, but by the end of the last verse, the cat was dead.

*  *  *

We buried Dorothy away from the clearing, two-feet down through a mess of roots and leaves. We laid beside her the shredded pajama that lured us into the trap. We smoothed the dirt with our palms, christened the ground with our tears, then sat together on the incline.

Mara saw it first. Her wet eyes were focused on a distant object, through the trees, just above the horizon. I followed her gaze and saw it too--curved exactly as she imagined, half-covered in evergreen trees, a cylindrical building on top of a dune--the hill from her drawings.

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