Motherless Child Read online

  As she pulled the cards to her, though, Natalie saw her check the fourth one that Natalie had touched. So casually. Her smile vanished completely.

  The moment it did, giggling exploded behind her. Natalie looked up just in time to see the woman’s daughter hurtle past, yelling, “Sorry, Mom, sorry, Creepy Cold Lady, couldn’t resist.” Then she was out the door of the Waffle House into the night.

  After a stunned few seconds, the woman in the scarves stood and started to fold her maps. Natalie glanced at Sophie, then back to the woman. The woman shook her head. Sighed. Flipped the deck so Natalie could see. Every single card was a black ace.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “She thinks she’s hilarious. Thinks she’s Tina Fucking Fey. I hope I didn’t scare you.”

  Out the window, Natalie could see the girl turning cartwheels in the parking lot. When she saw her mother looking, she waved.

  “She … is pretty hilarious,” Natalie said. Thinking of her son’s gurgle. Seeing his smile.

  “You’re not kidding,” said Sophie, in exactly the same tone, and Natalie knew she was thinking the same thoughts. The woman—and her daughter—really had shown them their futures, after all. The ones they weren’t going to have, no matter how much future they got.

  The woman took a ten-dollar bill from her purse and laid it next to Natalie. “For your patty melts,” she said. “And your patience.” She left.

  Absently, automatically, Sophie and Natalie both unwrapped their burgers and slathered them in ketchup. By the time they got outside, the woman and daughter were gone. The trucker boy, too, luckily for all of them. In the car, Natalie switched on the radio and started punching through the stations until she found Loretta, sending ’em all to Fist City.

  “Now, this,” she said through her hunger, through the image of the scarf woman’s daughter cartwheeling through the dark. “‘Fist City.’ Not ‘Sugar, Sugar.’ This is what singing is for.”

  Sophie clucked her tongue. “All that anger. You need to find a healthy outlet for that.”

  “Shut up,” said Natalie, and pulled them out of the lot.

  * * *

  George Jones on the radio now, singing flat and sad, no drama at all. Like he wasn’t even a person, just a disembodied feeling. About a girl he used to know.

  “The daughter can’t be Tina Fey,” Sophie said.

  “Tina what?”

  “That fortune-teller. She said her daughter thinks she’s Tina Fey. But if the daughter were Tina Fey, something would have gone wrong when she substituted the cards. For the daughter, I mean. Complications would have ensued.”

  “Complications?”

  “Hello? Ground control to Major Natalie Robot. Switch brain back to On position. Over.”

  “We have to get rid of these burgers,” Natalie said.

  Sophie let out an explosive sigh. “My God, yes, even the smell is giving me the wallies.”

  “The willies, goddamnit. Willies. Not wallies.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why not say it? What’s wrong with the willies?”

  “I like my Willie,” Sophie said quietly. “I miss him so.”

  Natalie twitched so hard that she almost swerved them off the road. Because she’d actually forgotten. Sophie hadn’t called her son by his real name in so long that Natalie had stopped knowing what it was.

  She glanced toward her friend. Sophie was crying.

  “You’ve got to stop doing that, hon.” She touched Sophie’s cheek. “You’ve got to stop thinking about it. They’re gone.”

  “I won’t let that happen, Nat. I won’t let it. I can’t.”

  “It’s already happened. It’s done.”

  “Natalie,” Sophie said, and instead of a whimper that new, mewing sound bubbled from her lips. “I’m so hungry.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to choose.”

  “I know.”

  “Anyone you want, Nat. Anywhere you want. We can be superheroes. Eat only bad guys. Or we can just pick a time, and wherever we are, whoever we meet at that precise moment, or whatever. I trust you. We can—”

  “Seriously, Sophie?” Natalie barked. “I’m serious, now. You want to lay this on me? You want me to have to live with the choice? What do you suggest? Come on, I want to hear it. Next breakdown victim we come across, maybe? Next dude in bad pants? Oh, I know, how about next black dude? You always told me you were going to try a black dude someday.”

  “That’s just mean.” Sophie sniffled.

  “You’re goddamn right.”

  “Natalie, it’s killing me. And you.”

  “Maybe we should let it.”

  “He said that wouldn’t work. He said instinct would take over. Remember?”

  “He said a lot of things. Maybe we’re stronger than he is.”

  “Maybe you are, Nat.”

  And suddenly, for the first time since it had happened, Natalie remembered his face. The Whistler’s face. Could see it hovering over her. That mouth, so red and round. Already dripping with her. The pull of him overwhelming, sucking in every bit of her as though he were a black hole. And yet all she’d wanted, at that moment—my God, I want it still—was for him to keep kissing her. Devouring her.

  No. She’d wanted to feed herself to him.

  What will it be like? she’d asked while he fed. Not actually caring.

  And he’d surprised her by pausing momentarily, as though between courses. As though he’d never considered the question before. Or—wait—as though he’d thought of little else.

  Like … he’d whispered. Staring at her. At motionless Sophie, on whose thighs Natalie lay. Like coming home. Like letting go. Of all those little, stupid feelings and sensations you think matter so much. Until you just slip away. Same thing that happens to everyone before they die. Only you’ll still be you. And you won’t die.

  He’d been right about all of it, too. Except the letting go. How was she supposed to do that? And what did one hold on to, afterward? When all those stupid little feelings and sensations were gone? Was it really possible to be alive and just ride the night wind, forever, like a bacteria or a spore? Was it possible to stay living and stop thinking? Was thinking what killed people, in the end?

  “Natalie,” Sophie whimpered.

  “Ssh.” She leaned back, closed her eyes, felt the car rushing them into the blankness. Carrying them where it would. Bacteria. Spore.

  “Natalie, please. Let’s go home.”

  Natalie opened her eyes just in time to see the deer’s flank as they slammed into it. The animal’s head snapped sideways and antlers banged down on the hood so hard that the GTO’s back wheels momentarily came off the road. Natalie jammed on the brake, but the deer stayed stuck, bumping and banging up and down as the car shuddered and screamed, and then the deer slid down the grille, bones booming as they splintered beneath the tires like Fourth of July firecrackers. Even as the car skidded to a sideways stop, Natalie knew there was still a part of the animal trapped in the rear tires, its weight like a trailer pull, dragging them.

  “Oh my God,” Sophie whined. “Oh my God.”

  Natalie squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles threatened to explode through her skin. With a grunt, she made herself let go, drew her hands into her lap.

  “You hit it,” Sophie said.

  “You think?”

  “Is it dead?”

  Natalie opened her mouth to give that the answer it deserved, then froze. She turned to Sophie, stared into her eyes. Sophie shrank back. It took her an absurdly, almost endearingly long time before she understood.

  Natalie wasn’t sure, but she thought the mewing was coming from her own throat now as she and Sophie both spun to their doors, wrenched them open, and leapt from the car. The animal was a splayed, shredded ruin locked to the bumper, its head bent up under the rear axle and its antlers shattered all over the road. Natalie and Sophie dove together into the pumping gore in its crumpled ribs like little kids swooping for candy i
n a burst piñata. Blood saturated Natalie’s skirt, pooled around her thighs, so warm. She knelt atop a rib and snapped it as she plunged her face down, almost banging her forehead against Sophie’s. The sound Sophie was making might have been laughter. As she buried her face in the spurting liquid, spitting aside hairy skin, Natalie reached out and stroked her friend’s hair.

  Sophie straightened first. Natalie followed moments later, settling back on her haunches, fingers still twisted in Sophie’s hair. Gently, she disentangled them and let go. Sophie’s face twisted up, and she kept spitting, over and over, trying to clear the taste from her lips and teeth. Natalie just wiped a disgusted hand repeatedly across her own mouth. Still kneeling in the mangled deer, they stared at each other.

  “So…” Sophie finally said, glancing down once more at the animal and then back at Natalie. “We’re vegetarians?”

  Natalie closed her eyes, shuddered, opened her eyes.

  “Humanitarians?” Sophie said.

  They stood together, arms around each other, bits of cartilage clinging to their skin, their legs and skirts dripping. Natalie was about to return to the car when Sophie’s hands tightened on her arms.

  “Nat. You need to hear me. I’m going home now.”

  “Sophie. We talked about this. We’ve talked and talked and talked.”

  “You’ve talked. Stop glaring. Stop pretending you’re better and wiser and just be my friend and listen. For both our sakes.”

  “Okay,” Natalie whispered, going completely still. Merle on the car radio, spilling gently out the open doors. Singing “Mama Tried.”

  “Just listen. I know why you think we need to run. I know you think you’re saving our Roos. But I’ve been thinking, too. A lot. It’s almost all I’ve thought about since we left. Except eating. And mostly, I haven’t even been thinking about that. Natalie. Seriously. What better gift could a mother give her children?”

  Natalie felt her jaw drop. Held her ground. Held to the Earth.

  “Think about it. Seriously. I’m serious. I can’t stop. He’s all I ever think about. His little feet. God, his little feet. We could be back there in, what, five hours? And never leave them again. Ever.”

  “You have to stop, Sophie. Please. You have to—”

  “What did you want for Eddie when Eddie was born, Natalie? What did you think you could do for him? What did you want to give him? How about no worries, ever? How about no pain? Ever.”

  “Sophie. I can’t hear this. I—”

  “How about no dying? You can come or not come, Natalie. But I’m going home. With or without—”

  It was like a cobra strike, Natalie thought seconds later, her teeth still buried in the softness under her best friend’s chin, Sophie’s body twitching helplessly underneath her. Like a goddamn bolt of lightning, Natalie thought as she drank. The only concern she’d had at the instant she’d acted was that it would taste like the deer, make her retch. That she wouldn’t be able to finish.

  And it tasted cold, all right. Sour. Not quite right.

  But it was bearable. Fine. She lapped away, more slowly now, burying her face deeper in Sophie’s throat, rocking side to side to Merle’s rhythm.

  It tasted fine.

  PART TWO

  12

  Or rather, she realized a good minute or so later, still straddling Sophie’s body and gulping greedily at her blood, it didn’t make her retch. The blood wasn’t pumping, of course, so she had to suck it to her lips, using the shredded jugular like a straw, and the taste had the ghost of actual flavor in it, but old and fizz-less, like a flat Coke. Also, it did about as much to slake her thirst as swallowing her own saliva. She straightened again.

  Under her, against her thighs, Sophie’s body still twitched faintly. But not with life. More like a pile of leaves she’d stirred, slowly going still. A sob rose in her throat. Natalie let it come, made herself bend her head and stare down into her best friend’s face. Still wide-eyed, too round, glowing. Gone. Sitting back on her haunches, Natalie looked away from Sophie, down the road between the pines, up into the blank, black sky.

  A wave of panic lifted her to her feet, set her staggering away only to slip in a paddy of deer-innards and fall hard on her back, smacking her head against the tarmac. She lay there, dazed, wetness welling through her skirt and blouse, willing a truck to come and crush her. She also wanted her hand to move itself out of the gristly, stringy goo it had clutched as she fell but was unable to do anything but lie there, openmouthed, sucking in the truth as though it could sustain her.

  She had been a mother, and wasn’t one, now. A daughter, too. She’d had a lifelong best friend. And had eaten her.

  And she was still hungry.

  Was this all there was, from here on? What else could there be? Apparently, she could lure living people to her without trying, without consequences. And precisely because of that, she could never draw any sustenance from them except by devouring them, ripping their precious, fragile, anguished, wasted lives from them.

  Or listening to them sing.

  With a whimper that was half shriek, Natalie shoved up to a sitting position, brought a hand to her face to wipe her lips and instead smeared cold deer-insides over them, shrieked again, and stumbled to her feet and toward the car. She had only two thoughts left. The only two thoughts she would ever have, for as long as she had any: music, and motion. Music and motion.

  And eating. But she wouldn’t think about eating.

  Wrenching her door closed behind her, she fell into the driver’s seat, not looking back, not looking back. She didn’t need any more reminders; she would see Sophie’s guileless eyes widening—in welcome?—at the instant Natalie had struck for her for the rest of her life. Forever. She tried to twist the key in the GTO’s ignition but instead knocked it out of the slot onto the floor mat.

  By the time her fingers found the key, she was gabbling nonsense words, fragments of half song she’d sung to herself while walking to work, coos she’d burbled to Eddie while leaning over his bassinet. Shivers wracked her body while her dry tongue and throat dried further and the emptiness outside sucked at her like a vacuum. She jammed the key in place, twisted the car to life, and without even straightening floored the gas, so that the thump from right beside her almost launched her through the windshield. Slamming on the brake and wrestling the wheel, Natalie banged her ribs into the door as the GTO skidded sideways, straightened, tilted almost all the way over on its side, and went still. Rumbling.

  What had she hit? Deer, probably, its legs or something, part of it, still stuck to the grille.

  Except the thump had been at her window. Practically right up against her cheek. She turned her head and saw the side-view mirror dangling, reflector-side down, like an ear halfway ripped off.

  Drive, she thought, even as her hands came off the wheel and her head, seemingly all on its own, swung the rest of the way around.

  Sophie stood in the center of the road. One hand raised, as though waving good-bye. As Natalie stared, the waving hand tipped all the way back on its wrist, flopped sickeningly behind, until Sophie used her other hand to straighten it. Tree shadows seemed to crisscross around her, not quite touching her, and they did nothing to hide the ruin of her throat where Natalie had torn it out. Her head wasn’t sitting quite right, either. Not sideways, exactly. Just no longer connected properly. Like a cut flower propped back on its stem. She just stood there, waving, bloody dress cleaving to her and the moonlight bathing her.

  Natalie was out of the car, almost skipping, and had covered half the distance back to Sophie before instinct stopped her. Survival sense.

  Should I be scared?

  Sophie still stood there. Hand raised. Natalie’s teeth-marks like a necklace around her throat, strung with little blood-pearls.

  To her surprise, Natalie realized that she’d raised her own arms, now. To defend herself, if need be. As she watched, Sophie’s head tilted to the right. Because Sophie was cocking it? Or was it coming loose?

/>   Or was that a challenge?

  Let it be, Natalie snarled inside her own head. If the attack came, she wouldn’t fight any more than Sophie had. Even so, forcing her arms back down to her sides felt like prying apart steel doors. She tilted her own head sideways, just enough to catch Sophie’s eyes and hold them. Then she started forward. With each step, her body tensed for an onslaught. Somewhere deep in her brain, something was screaming, but whether that was vampire-Natalie fearing for its life or whatever was left of the woman she’d been still keening over its death, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t much care. Her mouth kept forming her best friend’s name, but she couldn’t seem to get it all the way out. It came out as a jumble, equal parts “Sophe” and “so” and “sorry” and a sob.

  She kept walking. And Sophie kept watching. Bright eyes still bright, maybe just with starlight. Hand lifted, as though Natalie were still leaving.

  Slowly, slowly, Natalie reached out and touched Sophie’s arm. Sophie didn’t so much as blink or even lower her waving hand. Natalie lowered it for her. It came down a little too easily, like a stripped gear.

  “Sophe,” Natalie managed, and pushed at the blood-matted hair. “You’re still here.” Throwing her arms around Sophie’s shoulders, Natalie pulled her friend against her. Even as she did, she felt her neck tense for the bite, her whole body tremble as Sophie’s face, then teeth, settled against her throat.

  And didn’t tear. Didn’t rip. Just rested there.

  “I’m so sorry,” Natalie murmured, weeping, holding tight. “I had to. I had to. I’m sorry.” Against her hip, Natalie felt one of Sophie’s hands jerk, then settle on her back. Even then, the embrace felt more like holding a Sophie-doll than Sophie. Natalie held on anyway.

  Finally, after a long time, and without letting go, she turned and started to draw them both toward the GTO. “Come on,” she said. Half-sang. As though talking to her son. “Let’s clean you up. Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Come on.”

  When she had her friend settled and leaned in to pull the shoulder harness across Sophie’s chest, she accidentally jostled her upper arm, and Sophie’s head tipped sideways, started to stretch loose on its last tendons, and Natalie had to grab it and tilt it back, until it sat almost straight. She was afraid to take her hand away. If she did, she thought the head might roll clean off.