And then the woman’s head disappears.
Ava’s mind rebels against it, telling her she’s not seeing what she’s seeing. But the other Ava’s head is gone, her scream cut off, her neck gushing blood, her whole body still somehow suspended in the air, and there’s no head, there’s no head, there’s nothing.
Ava scrambles to her feet, watching as the rest of the woman disappears. And still, there’s nothing. Nothing there, and now no body, either. Only the other Ava’s blood on the ground, fresh and hot, so much Ava can smell it.
That’s not all she can smell, though. There’s a musk, something far older than fresh blood. Left to rot day in and day out, a layer of putrescence beneath the smell of the world around her.
Ava grips the pipe. She knows what death smells like, and it’s here for her again, at last.
She opens her mouth and screams defiance, then swings at nothing.
* * *
—
They hear both screams.
There’s no question which Ava is which.
And there are no more questions, really. At least not about the nature of the competition.
Mack struggles free of Brandon, slides out of their hiding spot, and bursts into the sunshine. It feels wrong, already, moving around in the open during the day. How quickly she’s been trained.
Brandon shuffles out after her. There’s something off about his face, something missing that was there before, but now that it’s gone Mack can’t say what it was.
“Which way?” Mack demands.
Brandon shakes his head. “It’s too late,” he whispers.
“No, we can—”
LeGrand walks toward them, his expression resolute and settled, some truth confirmed. He is no longer haunted. Whatever Brandon saw broke him, and whatever LeGrand saw either gave him strength or broke him so completely he came out a new shape.
“What was it?” Mack asks. Because LeGrand ran to help before, and if he isn’t running now, it means he doesn’t think there’s any possibility of help. Mack clutches her stomach, wanting to cry or scream, to run after Ava. Join her, however that’s possible, whatever that means. She can’t help but wonder, if she wasn’t here, would Ava still be? Did Mack make this happen? She cracked the shell, her protective shell, she let hope in, she let Ava in, and now this.
Now this.
“What was it?” she repeats.
LeGrand shrugs, twitching to the side with the movement as though he has something on his shoulders he’s trying to get off. “I don’t know.”
“It was the devil.” Brandon’s voice cracks on the verge of tears. He keeps jerking his head, looking at the other building near them, checking to make certain the old rusted frame of a demon is still where it should be. His eyes are wide, too wide, like he can’t close them. Whatever he saw has opened them to something they never considered before, and he can never shut it out again, never blink away the truth.
“What does that mean?” Mack demands. Brandon needs her to be gentle, but she has to have answers.
“That’s two.” LeGrand’s tentative features have shifted, a subtle change that rewrites him. He still has a baby face, but gone is the expression of a lost child. “So we have until tomorrow morning. We need to get out.”
“What do you mean, the devil?” Mack presses.
Brandon rubs his eyes as though trying to physically remove an image. “It’s a monster. The devil. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Mack looks to LeGrand. He nods in silent agreement.
They’re not making any sense, but Mack can’t dwell on it. It doesn’t matter. Ava matters. “We have to look for Ava.”
LeGrand doesn’t argue. Brandon shakes his head. “It won’t help,” he says, but he drifts in the direction he saw Ava run anyway.
It’s not hard to follow the trail, even for three people inexperienced with such things. Beautiful Ava’s drops of blood are fresh enough they catch the light, a thread of violence unspooling to lead them to what they need to see. To the final destination, the end of Mack’s infant hope. A new thing, so fragile, drowned in the pool of death they stop at.
“Can someone survive after losing that much blood?” LeGrand’s deep voice is soft but practical. He’s not asking it hypothetically, or hopefully. He’s asking whether they should keep looking. He’s letting Mack make the decision.
Mack stares at the only evidence remaining that a few minutes ago, she was happy. There’s nothing around the blood. No drag marks. No sense that someone ran, that they made it out, that anything happened here other than two violent, final ends. It’s an exclamation mark of blood, not an ellipsis. And certainly not a question mark. The story is ended.
There isn’t any more.
Beautiful Ava is gone. And so is Mack’s Ava. The first person who became a person to her since her family died, the first person who made Mack wonder if there could be more in her life. If there could be life in her life.
It’s over now. For Mack, at least.
She looks at LeGrand. Sad, haunted LeGrand, who Ava wanted to protect and help. “Why are you here?”
He doesn’t seem to consider her line of questioning odd given the circumstance. Perhaps none of them will ever find anything odd again, as long as they live.
The smell of blood and something older, more decayed, wronger, is overwhelming. As long as they live is feeling like not a very long time at all.
“I was banished from my family for trying to get a doctor for my sister. It’s against the rules to go outside the compound.”
“Compound?” Brandon asks.
“My father’s the prophet,” LeGrand says.
It doesn’t answer Brandon’s questions—raises far more of them—but Mack understands as much as she needs to. LeGrand was a prisoner. He broke the rules to help. That makes sense for the type of person who runs toward the sound when someone is screaming. He’s here because he was trying to save his sister. Mack is here because she didn’t try to save her sister. Because she hid and did nothing while her world was cut apart.
“If you get out,” LeGrand says, looking toward the trees where the fence looms somewhere in the impenetrable, winding green, beyond the ever-present stone pathway walls, “will you help her? I’m from Zion Mountain in southeastern Colorado. Her name is Almera. She can’t talk or walk, but she likes bubbles and the color yellow. They won’t give her the care she needs. You’ll have to kidnap her.” LeGrand nods, as though he’s made up his mind about something. “It’s the only way. I should have done it that way.”
Mack looks at Brandon. Brandon’s eyes are filled with tears, and she can’t imagine him kidnapping anyone. “Give us the details of how to break in and find Almera, just in case. But LeGrand gets to win,” Mack says to Brandon. “If there’s such a thing as winning. And if there’s not, he’s the one who gets out.” She’s afraid Brandon will disagree, that he’ll insist it’s not fair for them to decide on LeGrand without discussing it.