Dust by Joan Frances Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

watching. Teresa turned to me, all hostility vanished. “Why don’t you go have some fun?” she said, motioning toward them. “The little squirt’ll thank you in the long run, for giving her a spine.”
    Run along and play, kiddie. No thanks. I shrugged, watching Renee get beaten, watching the watchers, remembering the meaty smack of fists and crack of bone when Joe and I first met. This little bitch wasn’t even trying to defend herself, what the hell did Fearless Leader want with something so useless? Maybe just some fun. I closed my eyes, taking in the odors of dry musty tree bark and old possum tracks and peeling rain-softened paint, and that’s when I caught it.
    The smell, that strange chemical smell that I’d sniffed in the air earlier and thought was Renee. I could smell Renee too, the stench of formaldehyde and dyes and fixatives and cosmetics smeared over and shot through dead skin, but this was something different: just as sterile and alien but without a pedigree of its own, an orphan smell I couldn’t place but knew was from nowhere in nature. It was coming from Teresa, emanating from her skin as she lolled under the rotting gazebo roof, and over the dull patina of her decay was a layer of soft, shiny dampness, marinating her in a pungent little sweat bath. Not rain, it’d been dry for days. Sap, it looked like, beads of it oozing up from freshly cut wood. I listened, not knowing what I thought I’d hear from her, but got only the same everyday brain music and wordless hum of thought I heard from everyone else. She was perfectly normal, except she wasn’t. The more I stared the more she stank, of vinegar and varnish. Nothing dying, and nothing ever alive.
    Teresa caught me looking. She just smiled.
    Dizzy and punch-drunk, Billy reared back and let fly, intestines playing a symphony of farts, gurgles and sickening wet explosions like air ripping out of a balloon. Clouds of pure stink welled up from his gas-bloated guts, making us groan with laughter and shout “How’d you like it, little Renee, how’d you like that,” but our new baby sister had long since passed out.

4
    The small, stifled sobs grew louder and harsher until they crested into a single sorrowing wail. The thud of a fist followed, and Joe’s voice snarling, “Goddammit, bitch, go to sleep!”
    So much for his sulk in the woods doing him any good. I winced as Florian and I crossed the footbridge and headed across the open park field. I wasn’t feeling so good today, off-kilter and fuzzy-headed like a hoo catching a cold—Billy threw all my sleep right off, tooting Teresa’s triumphant homecoming—but still more than glad to be on watch and getting out of earshot. They should’ve fed Renee first: It was the hunger pangs killing her, not any memories of Mommy and Daddy, but everyone had decided they were too tired to throw her a bone. I’d bring her back something, a rabbit or two. Florian was off in his own world as usual, humming some century-old song to himself as we went past the sugaring shack, crossed the second footbridge and another, handkerchief-sized parking lot and reached the welcome shadiness of the overgrown nature trails.
    It was hot this morning, too hot for barely spring. We headed east toward the riverbank, passing the weed-smeared signpost for the Sullen Trail (a settler’s name, John or Jim Sullen of years past, or someone’s stupid idea of funny?), and began our ambling walkabout of watching, listening, sniffing for hoos. There was no way two slow-moving undeads could cover the whole park in a day, there could be a platoon of Marines camped on the other side of the forest for all we knew, but Teresa insisted.
    “She does this just to keep us busy,” I muttered.
    “That’s no news, pet.” Florian called everyone pet, even Teresa. “But also for some make-believe excitement—what if there are hoos in the woods, with guns ? Or worse, matches? What if we’re all in their sights?” He spat: not from a