I glowered at her and clomped through the house as a warning to the little master. Inside the upstairs bedroom, Kitten had laid flowers all over his mother’s rotting body, some threaded in the limp locks of her hair. It was a sweet gesture and fitting tribute, but I was bitter at him for making my job harder.
“Are you finished?” I asked gruffly. His hand was holding hers, softly stroking her paper-thin skin.
“How will you do it?” he asked, meeting my eyes at last, arresting me with his liquid amber gaze. His eyelashes were still wet with tears, and they clumped together in spiky triangles. It twisted my cold, black heart to look at him. I hated it.
“Gently,” I said, withdrawing my best hunting knife, recently sharpened. “As painlessly as possible.”
His breath caught at the sight of my blade. “I want to be here for it.”
“You don’t have to.” I took no pride in these killings, and I would have preferred not to have an audience.
“I want to be here. For her.”
I nodded and steeled my nerves for the execution. “Anything more you want to say before we do this?”
He shook his head and began to hum. I didn’t recognize the tune. Maybe it was a church hymn, in which case, I wouldn’t know it. The woman’s head turned slightly in his direction, and I hoped that she could hear him in her final moments.
“I love you, Mom,” he whispered, his voice choked with grief.
I cupped the back of her head, supporting the skull at the nape. Her chapped lips parted, mouth opening as if to allow her soul to escape. Her opaque eyes stared heavenward. Gripping the knife handle tightly, I took a deep breath and dragged the razor-sharp edge across her throat, making sure to exert enough pressure to slice through her internal jugulars in one go. A quick death. They tore like rubber bands, and she emitted a wet gurgle right before blood began pouring out of her mouth, mingling with the blood from her neck. I drew back both hands to avoid the spill.
Later, I would sever her spinal cord to ensure that the body could not resurrect, but that was messy business and Kitten didn’t need to see it. Her head slumped against the pillow in a soft sigh, head angled sideways like a broken doll. I shut both her bruised eyelids as the rest of her human life force drained away.
Rest in peace, I said to myself on her behalf. As trite as it may seem, the words were sincere.
Kitten was crying again, muffled, wet little whimpers and sniffles that made my lethal arms want to wrap around him. But no one wants comfort from their mother’s killer. Instead, I took a step back and wiped my blade on the bed sheets before sheathing it again, remembering the cutesy sayings posted in their living room.
Blessed.
Instead of cringing or gagging, I felt like weeping.
And I hated it.
FOUR
KITTEN
My mother was gone.
I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Tears leaked out the corners of my eyes and trailed down my temples. My nose was clogged but I didn’t bother blowing it. I couldn’t move, my limbs heavy and my heart weighing me down like a stone inside my chest. I didn’t plan on leaving my bed ever again.
Some part of me knew this was how it might end, but through it all, I had held out hope that Santiago would return with medicine, or a doctor, or news of a treatment. That hope was gone. The kid with the dead eyes had snuffed it out, just as he had my mother’s life.
I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face in my arms. Why did those jerks have to come here? Why now? We’d managed to avoid being found for so long. In the early months of the plague when gasoline and food became scarce, neighbors had worked together to hunt and gather water and defend our territory against looters and thieves. Then the power and internet went out, and we lost touch with the outside world. I knew Rabids existed, but I’d never seen one up close. As things got worse, our parents tried to shield us from it, which meant a lot of hushed conversations when they thought we weren’t listening.
Then people started getting sick and leaving. But not us. We stayed. After my father died, it was just my mother, my brother, and me. We’d been on guard for any signs of strangers passing through and hid in the basement until trouble had passed. My mother always said it was through the grace of God alone that we’d never been discovered. Then we’d all gotten sick, and after Santiago and I recovered, he left to go find medicine, and I stayed behind to take care of our mother, but I should have been more careful.
This was my fault.
I was alone, even more so than ever before, and what if something bad had happened to Santiago along the way? The possibility that I may have lost my brother too was overwhelming. How was I ever going to survive on my own?
“Ahem.”
I rolled onto my back and found the strange, pale-skinned girl standing over me, my cat in her arms. The girl looked to be a little younger than me, wearing a navy dress patterned with big, pink flowers. Her wide-brimmed hat covered most of her hair, except for two braids of the palest blond, almost silver, that lay across her shoulders.
“She missed you,” the girl said before dumping Little Miss Purrfect onto my stomach. The weight of my cat comforted me as she kneaded her claws into my chest. I didn’t mind the little pricks of pain; they reminded me that I was real, and necessary, if only to feed and take care of her.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
