The Garden of Darkness

“Yes,” said Mirri. “It hurts like a dog.”


Clare elevated Mirri’s feet and massaged her ankles until the swelling started to dissipate.

The next morning, Mirri’s feet showed minimal signs of swelling. They stopped early for lunch at a place where the road was bordered by trees. Under their shade, a light coating of snow covered the ground, and Clare thought she could make out deer tracks.

Bear went to investigate.

Jem shook out a tarp for them to sit on, set up the tiny camping stove and started heating up some Spam. Mirri lay on her back with her ankles in the air, just in case. Sarai read one of her precious books. Clare sat with Jem.

“You know what’s weird?” she asked.

“What’s weird?” He used his pocketknife to cut the Spam into small blocks.

“They’re out there. Kids. If we survived, there have to be others. But where are they?”

Jem looked at her seriously. “They’re hiding. Or making their way to the Master. Or maybe a lot of them just couldn’t make it in the post-Pest world. Accidents happen all the time, and there aren’t any more doctors.”

Clare leaned against Jem. He was warm.

“God, I hate Spam,” she said.

Bear loped towards them, and Clare started as she saw the trail of bright red blood he left in the snow. When he reached her, she searched through his fur for an open wound, but found nothing. His muzzle, however, was covered with clots of blood and tissue.

“It’s not his blood,” Jem said.

“Is he all right?” Mirri asked.

“He probably killed something,” said Clare. “He has to eat, too.”

“It looks like he killed something big,” said Jem.

“Maybe a deer?” asked Clare.

“Maybe.”

“I bet he couldn’t eat a whole deer,” said Mirri.

Clare and Jem looked at each other.

“Fresh meat,” said Clare.

After putting away the food, they followed Bear’s trail, the dots of bright blood stark against the white of the snow. Where the snow had melted, it was harder to follow the trail, but the further they got, the more blood marked the ground. Bear quietly followed Clare, who kept him close.

Soon they found the carcass. Bear had pulled out the entrails and gorged on the soft parts of the animal. The animal’s fur was grey, and it had outlandish, peculiar antlers.

“What is that?” asked Mirri.

“It’s a moose,” said Jem. “And I have no idea how Bear brought it down.”

“It’s enormous,” said Sarai.

“I suppose now we drag it with us,” said Mirri. “But it seems kind of big.”

“It’s too big,” said Jem. “We’ll have to cut it up and take part of it. I brought a knife, but it’s not very sharp.” Jem studied the moose, and Bear watched him with his yellow diamond eyes.

“How do we get at the steaks?” Mirri asked.

“We need to pull back the pelt to get at the meat underneath,” said Jem.

Clare looked at him as if he were speaking Esperanto.

“But first,” he added. “We need to cut its throat to drain out any blood that might be pooling. Clare, why don’t you take Mirri and Sarai someplace?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Mirri.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” said Sarai.

“How do you know how to do all this?” asked Clare.

“I went hunting with my brother. Hated it. At the time, I wanted to throw up while he was dressing the kill. But this time it’s different. I’m different.”

Michael had always said that the school chess players, championships or no, were nerds, and that nerds didn’t do anything physical. Like play football.

Clare wished Michael were here now to see this.

And then she realized, with some confusion, that this was a very different way of wanting Michael than anything she had felt before.

After he slit the throat of the moose, Jem slipped the knife between the pelt and the body.

“Now we all pull,” he said, and, with some effort, the pelt began to peel away. When they were finally done, they had two haunches of moose and a slab of fatty meat from its chest. Crows watched them from the trees.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Jem. “I want to be settled in somewhere before dark.”

The meat was heavy and bloody, and soon they were bloody too. Mirri pushed a strand of hair from her face and left a smear. Jem’s shirt was soaked through, a solid red, and his hands were covered with drying blood. He tried to wipe them in the patches of snow, but that made them quickly numb and cold. Clare tried to warm his hands with her own, but it did nothing except smear the blood onto hers.

“There’s something Lady Macbeth-ish about this,” said Jem.

“Ninth grade is kind of young for Macbeth,” said Clare. “I’m surprised.”

“My mother used to read Shakespeare aloud to me at night when I was very small. She thought it would improve my mind.”

“That must have been pretty dreary.”