The Garden of Darkness

“It was absolutely terrifying. After Macbeth I slept under my bed for a week. I mean it.”


“I was wondering,” said Mirri. She stopped. She looked at what they had culled of the carcass as the others waited for her to go on. “Once people are dead, do they still count? Or are they just lost in a pile of bodies, in the thousands of bodies, in the millions of bodies?”

They stared at her.

“What I mean,” she said, “is that we buried my mother and we remember her. But what about all the others? Are they just nothing?”

“I don’t like the question,” said Sarai.

“Nobody’s nothing,” said Clare. “Nobody. I mean it.”

“How do you know?” asked Mirri.

“I just know.”

As they were trudging back to the camp with the meat, they saw, half covered by leaf litter, the partially skeletonized body of a man. Clare stopped long enough to make a tiny cairn out of pebbles.

“Your thoughts?” asked Jem.

“That I could almost weep over the amount of meat we had to leave behind,” said Clare, turning away from the cairn.

“I meant about the body.” Jem seemed disturbed. “Because that’s all it is. Just another body. Mirri’s right. In the end, we’re nobody.” Clare put a hand on his shoulder, but it was Mirri who had the last word.

“I don’t think that anymore,” said Mirri. “You’re forgetting, Jem. Clare said that everybody counts. Everybody. And Clare would know. Because she’s Somebody.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





VISITORS





THE HOUSE WAS small and cozy. Outside, pumpkins rotted in the remains of a large garden, the black rinds caved in. Brown stalks of corn rustled in the rising wind. Mirri found one perfect cherry tomato that must have escaped the frost by being buried in leaves. She gave it to Sarai, who gave it to Jem, who gave it to Clare, who gave it back to Mirri, who popped it in her mouth.

This time they picked the smallest bedroom for their nest.

The other bedroom was occupied, but before they unpacked, Clare and Jem rolled the body into sheets, took it out back and sprinkled dirt on it. The ground was too hard for any real digging.

“It’s too much like taking out the trash,” Jem said.

“We can have a funeral,” said Clare. “Mirri will love it.”

And so they did. Mirri made up some tributes. Clare thought that it was not unlike allowing a small child to make a ceremony out of flushing a goldfish, but she kept those thoughts to herself. She had been the one to say it as they were walking through the woods: that body was Somebody.

Later that evening they had the moose steaks, and the steaks did not disappoint. They were gamey and strong, tough but delicious, and challenged the mouth in a way that food from a can never would.

“It’s like eating Mother Nature,” said Mirri.

“That’s a really disturbing image,” said Jem.

“I kind of know what she means,” Clare said.

“Can I have some more?” asked Sarai.

Later that evening, Jem found a chess set. The board was outsized with large pawns and knights and kings and queens—pieces that fit nicely in the hand. The bishops all wore different frowns. The castles were many-turreted.

Jem challenged Clare. She sat down to play with great misgivings—Jem was, after all, on the chess team; he had almost won at the nationals and she doubted she could give him a good game. But when she moved her first piece, he looked up at her, startled and happy.

“The Fried Liver Attack!” he exclaimed. “This is going to be interesting. It’s a gutsy move.”

“Fried liver?”

“You haven’t beaten me yet. Although this is going to keep me on my toes. Just let me think.”

“I only made one move,” said Clare.

He trounced her in four. The next game she moved a pawn, and, once again, he became animated.

“The Benko Gambit! You sure know how to start a game. You were holding back on me, weren’t you?”

“No, I really wasn’t.”

“When Svein Johannessen made the Benko Gambit, Bobby Fischer declined—and I’m going to decline, too.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing. Really. I played Michael a few times, but he always beat me.”

“Michael won?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Jem looked disappointed. “Maybe I should spot you a few pieces.”

The others decided they wanted to play chess, too, but they finally went to bed after Sarai, checkmated in five moves by Mirri, threw the white king across the room, instantly beheading him.

As Clare began to doze off, she realized that it was snowing outside.

“Think the snow’ll cause problems?” she asked Jem quietly.

“I guess we’ll see,” he said.





BUT THE NEXT morning, before they could leave, Noah, Rick and Tilda arrived on their doorstep. And then, sometime that night, Noah died.





THEY WATCHED THROUGH the side window as the three strangers came up to the front door and rang the doorbell. At the sound, Bear leapt to his feet and began barking at the door.