Читать книгу The Prey - Tom Isbell, Tom Isbell - Страница 11

HOPE KNOWS HE’S DEAD the moment she returns from watch. Faith is tucked into the curve of their father’s body, her tears soaking his shirt.

Hope places her fingers against the crook of his neck. Cold to the touch. No hint of a pulse. It hits her like a punch to the gut.

“Come on,” she says, pulling her sister off.

“We have to bury him,” Faith says, eyes red.

“I know.”

“How’re we going to do that? We don’t have a shovel.”

“We’ll think of something.”

“But what? We can’t leave him like this.”

“I know that …”

Faith is screaming now. “We have to do something! What’re we gonna do?”

Hope slaps her sister hard across the face, regretting it instantly. Faith’s head snaps to one side, the red imprint of Hope’s fingers tattooing her face.

“I’ll take care of it,” Hope says, finding a reason to look away. “We’ll cover him with rocks. That way the animals can’t get him.”

“Is that a proper way to bury someone?” Faith whispers.

“Proper enough. You go take watch. I’ll do this.”

Faith drags herself to the cave’s entrance, running the back of her hand across her runny nose. Hope feels a stab of guilt for the way she treated her. Still, someone has to be the strong one, she tells herself.

The first thing she does is retrieve her father’s few belongings. A knife. A leather belt. Flint from his front pocket. It feels like an invasion, going through his clothes, but she has to do it. Flint means fire. A knife means survival.

There’s something else there, too. A small, gold locket, attached to a thin, tarnished chain. As soon as Hope’s eyes fall on it, she has a distant memory of it dangling from her mother’s neck. And when she undoes the clasp and opens it, she knows what she will see before she sees it.

Two miniature oval photographs. One of her father, one of her mother. From younger days. How innocent they look. And happy. Now encased in a locket’s tomb, facing each other for all eternity. No wonder he carried it with him all these years.

She slips it into her pocket.

The process of dragging rocks is tedious, and she carefully places them atop her father’s body as though—even in death—he can feel the weight. Faith weeps steadily by the cave’s entrance. Hope’s eyes are as dry as sand. There is no time for tears. Her father taught her that.

Live today, tears tomorrow.

Hope has crossed her father’s hands atop his chest when she notices the curled, clenched fingers of his right hand. They are stiff with death and it’s no small struggle to straighten them. More surprising than the effort itself is what she discovers within his gnarled grip.

A small, crumpled slip of paper.

Hope tugs the paper free from her father’s hand. She sees one word written there, scrawled in charcoal.

Separate.

Hope shakes her head and crumples the note back up.

When she finishes the burial mound, both girls gather by the body. They have never been to a funeral before. Or a wedding. Nothing.

In lieu of a prayer, Faith says, “I heard what he told you. About separating.”

Hope tries to hide her surprise. “He was delirious,” she says. “Out of his head with fever. I’m not thinking of it if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not.” Their eyes run up and down the grave of rocks. “But I think we should.”

“You think we should? Separate?”

Faith nods. “If he was right about that twins stuff, it sounds like you’d”—she pauses to correct herself—“we’d have a better chance on our own.”

“Faith, you wouldn’t last a day out there. No offense.”

Faith bristles. “I’m not as helpless as you think.”

“Uh, yes you are.”

Hope can see she’s hurt her feelings. If Hope isn’t slapping her sister with her hand, she’s doing so with her words.

“I’m going to get some food,” she says, impatient and angry all at once.

Faith doesn’t respond.

At the edge of a swampy bog Hope spears half a dozen plump bullfrogs. She brings the meat back to the cave late that afternoon and it cooks up good. They wolf it down without a word. After dinner, they settle on their makeshift beds, still not having spoken since the morning. Hope falls into a deep sleep, dreaming of everything and nothing.

When morning sunlight wakes her, there’s no sign of her sister anywhere.

“Faith,” she calls, first inside the cave, then out. The only answer she gets is birdsong. “Faith!”

Still nothing.

No extra footprints pattern the ground. No sign of wild animals. But Faith’s few possessions are gone. No canteen, no backpack, no shawl.

Hope curses not so silently to herself. She isn’t sure who she is angriest at: Faith, for thinking she can make it on her own, or herself, for basically daring her to go.

Or her father, for bringing up the notion of separating in the first place.

Although Faith’s body is light and her footprints barely dent the ground, Hope will have no problem trailing the flattened grass, the snapped twigs. After ten years of tracking prey at her father’s side, she knows the signs.

Hope finds the trail and determines which way Faith has gone … then promptly goes the other direction. To hell with her sister.