Page 5 of Bird on a Blade

I don’t even have the Bowie knife I used to kill those hateful counselors since it was still jammed in the wall when I got shot.

The camp is different, too. That was the second place I wentwhen I woke up four days ago, after the house. It’s all boarded up and overgrown now, save for one cabin. No trace of the dining hall, either; they must have torn it down, too. That, more than the house, makes me sad.

Because for the whole fifteen years that I was in the ground, healing from the gunshot, I thought about her. Her frightened, wide eyes and soft creamy flesh. The damp salt of her tears. Her scent. When all I could smell was dirt and rot I’d think about that scent, piney and sweet, and I’d be back in the dining hall and she’d be in my arms and it’d be perfect again, the closest thing to Heaven my people will ever see.

That first day after I revived, I just wandered around the camp ‘cause it was empty and abandoned and I needed to recollect my memories. All I’d held on to in the dirt was her, Edie Astor, and it got me through the worst of things, but I needed to think more clearly now that I was out in the open. Now that I was alive again. At that point, I didn’t even know how long it’d been.

The human scent on the camp was faint, like humans come around occasionally but hadn’t been there for a little while, so it surprised me when I found that one of the cabins didn’t look all broken down like the others. It had a fresh coat of paint and the grass around it was cut short, not overgrown like the rest of the camp. The front door had a digital lock on it, but I was able to jimmy in through the back window.

It was nice inside, decorated and all, but it didn’t smell like someone lived there. My people, we can sniff out humans, and my senses were heightened from coming alive again. Everything was new and fresh and working properly, and this place reminded me of the scents in a motel, where no one stays long enough for things to linger. There were other signs, too, like how there were pots and pans in the kitchen but no food, and how the closets were empty. It was kind of like how the camp used to be, although I didn’t know why it was just this one cabin and not all of them.

I decided not to worry about it. I took a long hot steamyshower and stroked my cock for the first time in what felt like decades, groaning as I shot my load down the drain, thinking about Edie the whole time. Then I got out and dried off and walked around the cabin naked, flinging open closet doors until I finally found some clean clothes folded up in the attic storage, jeans and a T-shirt that were a little too big for me. I kept my original boots ‘cause they hadn’t decayed like the rest of my clothes had.

Then I realized the big black mirror on the wall was the TV, one of those fancy flatscreens, and it took me some time to figure out how it all worked because it was hooked up to the Internet instead of having the staticky old stations I used to watch. That was also when I learned how long it had been because there was a date in the corner, and when I saw it I felt like I’d been shot again.

Fifteen fucking years.

Since then, I’ve focused on getting my wits about me and doing all the things Mama taught me. Went out to the spot in the woods where I’d buried my false IDs and the big coffee can of cash and my spare knife. Seeing that put me in the mind to kill, but I knew I had to get situated first.

Out here in southwest Virginia, there are lots of old abandoned houses if you know where to look, although what I eventually found wasn’t a house at all but an old church, one of those tidy white ones with the steeple and all. I like it well enough. There’s a little apartment in the back where the pastor would have lived, and I’ve been fixing it up the past few days, cleaning it real good because I don’t want to feel like I’m in the dirt again. It’s got well water, too, so I’ve got running water even if I don’t have electricity. Eventually, I’m going to walk into Altarida and use the cash I buried to buy a pickup track and a generator and maybe some pantry food to go along with the venison I’ve been eating since I woke up. But I know I’m gonna need to kill someone before I do that. Being around humans with theseheightened senses, smelling their blood and hearing their pulses—if I don’t get a real kill first, who knows what I’ll do in town?

But then something happens that changes my plans.

I smell it when I’m working in the church’s overgrown graveyard, clearing away the sticker burrs growing around the gravestones. A sudden, hot flush of human blood.

I rise up from my crouch, sniffing the air. It’s cool and breezy and the human blood scent is strong, which means they’re nearby. My fingers flex at my side, and I turn, trying to place it.

Smells like it’s coming from the camp.

I’ve got my knife on me, like always, and I creep out of the churchyard and into the woods. The camp’s about a ten-minute walk, not far at all. Too close, Mama’d probably say, but the church is dilapidated and wild, set off from the hiking trails. I move through the trees, following the trail of blood. It pulses in my chest, singing out to me, and I ease the knife out of its holster to feel the weight of it in my hand. It’s not as good as my Bowie knife, but the blade is sharp like moonlight. It’ll get the job done.

When I reach the edge of the camp, I stick to the shadows, surveying the property. A sleek silver car is parked in front of the fixed-up cabin. I tuck myself into the trees, watching. Waiting. It feels good to be on the hunt again, the real hunt. Stalking deer for food isn’t the same.

Something in the air shifts. The blood is on the move. A second later, the door swings open?—

And I smell it. Pine and honeysuckle. The scent that kept me sane during the fifteen years I was in the ground. The scent of Heaven.

She’s here.

Edie Astor steps out into the sunlight, and it’s like the first time I saw her, fifteen years and one death ago. My body thrums. The air gets all tight and choking. I want to stare at her like a painting, want to learn all the ways her body can move. I want topull her into me, consume her bite by bite until we’re all tangled together and you can’t tell me from her.

What I don’t want to do is to kill her, even though it kind of feels the way it does when I see someone I want to kill, my nerves getting all jangly like Christmas lights. But she’s just so beautiful, so pristine. It makes me want to protect her, I think. The perfect prey, too perfect even to kill.

She steps into the sunlight and stops, fingers curled around the straps of her backpack, her face tilted toward the sky. She looks older, of course, but I like it, the way her face seems more in focus somehow. Her hair is longer, falling in thick black curls around her shoulders. But she has that same lush body, all that softness I want to grab and squeeze and lick and bite.

Her shoulders hitch, and she turns toward the woods. That’s when I see it.

She has a black eye and mottled bruises around her neck.

Both are probably a few days old, given the way they curdle at the edges a little. But I know what both of them mean.

Blood pounds in my ears. Who did this to her? Are they here? No, I only sense her blood. She’s alone.

Is that why she’s here? To escape whoever hurt her?

The dreamy floating feeling I get whenever I see her flushes away, replaced by a blinding, iridescent rage. As soon as I find out who did this to her, I’m going to cut them limb from limb and paint my body in their blood.

Just like I did fifteen years ago.

---