Page 6 of Flesh and Bone

But he was so hungry. There was something chewing at him from the inside, trying to get out. His head wasn’t right. But he was so hungry—

He craved red meat. He wanted to know what Marshall tasted like. They were twin urges, confusingly conjoined. He had touched Marshall that night, but never put his mouth on him. Marshall had spilled thick and hot into Everett’s palm and over his knuckles, his heartbeat thrumming against Everett’s fingers. Everett hadn’t tasted him then, not even to put his lips to his own skin in the aftermath. He might have, if he had known how his curiosity would warp and keen later.

Lifting his mangled arm with his left hand, he put his nose to the slab that had been sliced away to hang loose, and breathed in. Nothing of Marshall’s scent lingered in the blood or meat. He whimpered, hurting and scared of himself, scared of dying, but something turned it into a guttural growl. Opening his mouth, he tasted flesh. Salt and iron. As he tore a chunk away andswallowed, his eyes rolled back in awful pleasure, and the guilt and the horror were pushed back under his wave of hunger.

???

Marshall circled the corpse,his hackles up until he was sure it was dead. Planting the lamp on a patch of bare ground, he paced for a minute, restless until he found the nerve to dig his shotgun barrel into the thing’s ribs and shove it onto its side.

“What the fuck is that,” he breathed, crouching to take a better look.

If he’d got a good look at it in the distance, he would have guessed it was some badly-bred dog with mange, but that didn’t hold water so close-up. It was near the size of a heifer, with dark, coarse hair down its back, thinning on its sides and over its flanks to leave its underbelly and lower limbs bare. That was one thing; some disease or hereditary defect could explain that away.

Its face, though — Marshall had never seen an animal with a face like that, and he never wanted to again. The snout was blunt like it had been bashed in, with too many teeth sticking out of its maw. They bristled at odd angles, incisors and bonecrushers all mixed up together like they’d been in such a hurry to erupt from the gums that they hadn’t paid any attention to the natural order of things. Cracked black lips like cured leather wrapped around them, locked in a permanent snarl before giving way to pallid flesh going blue in death.

There was something wrong with it that went beyond physical deformity. That kind of bloodlust wasn’t natural to any animal.Marshall took a steadying breath before kneeling in the dry yellow grass, grey in the dark, and peeling back the lid of the thing’s left eye. Cursing, he immediately let go and scuffled back, but the eye stayed open, staring at him. The iris was pale, and the way it swam in the white was all human. Bloodshot and accusatory, it seemed to look straight at Marshall through the gauzy film of death coating it.

“Fuck me,” Marshall muttered.

He wanted to bury the thing and never see it again, but stronger than the revulsion was the need to understand what he was looking at.

He slit the thing’s belly open lengthways with his knife before gritting his teeth and digging into the wound. It was messier than butchering a cow but not so different from helping birth a calf. The organs were slick, still warm as he cracked open the creature’s ribs to open up the abdominal cavity. The guts slopped into the dirt, shining purple and pink. Grimacing, Marshall scooped the rest of them out and threw them aside, digging deeper until he hit something cool and firm. Not bone, but a body.

Marshall paused. Whatever was in there, he didn’t want to see it. This creature was unnatural, through and through, and if he kept digging, there’d be no turning back from that. He’d have to reconcile whatever he saw with his understanding of the world, and he might not come back from that.

But it had gone after his friend. If Everett was right and it really had been stalking them for weeks, Marshall wanted to know what it was.

With both hands, he pulled the body into the light.

Like being birthed from some demonic mother, the naked, slimy body of a man emerged. Whether he had died before or after he shot the creature, Marshall didn’t know. The body lay wormlike against his knees, pale skin scraped away in sheets, the lips chewed off to bare a pained, gap-toothed grimace, eyes clenched shut and fingers and toes curled in rictus claws. Freckles stood out stark against bloodless flesh. Marshall didn’t recognize the man, and he knew most of the ranch hands and cowboys west of the Big Muddy. Vague familiarity niggled at him, like he might have met the man years ago. But that couldn’t be right, not with the man looking to be so young. Barely out of his teens.

With a shaky hand, he lifted one of the corpse’s eyelids.

There was nothing underneath, just an empty socket bruised purple and trails of stringy nerves dragging out of it, like they’d been connected to something that had ripped away.

The creature’s pale eye stared up at Marshall.

Marshall stood, stepping away from the thing as his stomach tied itself in knots. The urge was strong to put a bullet point-blank through both heads to be sure there was no chance either one could ever get up again. He had one hand on his revolver when something crashed inside the cabin and he jumped, on edge like a stray cat.

He was a goddamn coward, not staying by Everett’s side. He should’ve stayed; fuck that thing dead in the dust, fuck the cattle they were meant to be driving to Bar U Ranch, and to hell with their runaway horses, too. He’d find them come morning. Everett was the one who needed him most.

Everett was gnawing his own arm down to the bone.

Marshall’s heart plunged to meet his rising gorge.

“Everett, what the fuck! What are you doing? Hey—”

Everett didn’t stop when Marshall barged inside, just doubled down, fiercely desperate, like he hated what he was doing but couldn’t stop himself. Slamming the lamp back in place on the dresser, Marshall grabbed Everett’s good hand before forcing his ruined arm away from his mouth. Everett tried to follow, teeth snapping on empty air, his eyes wild and bright with fever. Marshall tasted bile.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he repeated, giving Everett’s shoulder a shake, furious and helpless. “Jesus, Ev, what have you done to yourself?”

“Help me,” Everett choked, viscera stuck between his teeth.

He’d chewed his arm to the core, teeth leaving white scrape-marks against pink bones, the flesh jagged and pulpy. Enough had been chewed off — eaten, Marshall realized with a fresh lurch of nausea — so that even if Marshall tried to fit it back together like he’d done before, there was too much missing, and all that raw wound would stay open to the air. Not a hope in hell of fending off infection like that.

Marshall roughly swallowed back his own sick as he wrapped what was left of Everett’s arm tight against his chest to pin it in place. Everett’s good arm, Marshall tied behind his back, roping a harness over his shoulders and around his chest. Swaddled tight, Everett barely had the mobility to get to his feet, and he couldn’t reach any of the ropes or bandages with his teeth to chew through. Marshall was tempted to hogtie him, but that would likely do more harm than good. By the time he was done, Everett had settled somewhat, his chin against his chest, hair inhis face. A string of red drool hung from his mouth. Marshall dropped to the edge of the bed beside him, where they sat in silence.

“What was it?” Everett asked listlessly.

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