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Rags showed her the picture, holding it up as if the little girl could see her mother through it. “Does she know what you do to people?”
No answer.
“Does she?”
“No.”
“No,” agreed Rags. “What do you think she’d say if she knew?”
No answer. Rags caught the glance Tom and Ledger shared between them. Ledger was about to say something, but Tom shook his head. They waited, letting Rags own this moment.
“I know what she’d say.”
“You don’t even know her.”
Rags shrugged. “How’s that matter?”
No answer.
“What would she say?” asked Tom.
Rags still held the locket out. “She’d hate you,” she said to Mama Rat. “She’d hate you and she’d run away.”
A breath of wind swept down the street, and it made the locket sway on its broken chain. It blew some of the stink of the dead skunk away. And it carried a distant sound, something that made everyone look. Both dogs growled softly. The sound was a moan.
Not one voice. Many.
Although she couldn’t see them yet, Rags knew that the dead were coming.
The dead always came.
“We’re drawing a crowd,” said Ledger. “Put a button on this, kid, and let’s get out of here.”
Rags nodded. “I can’t make you promise that you’ll stop doing this stuff. I don’t think I’d believe you even if you did promise. You’re a monster. So are your friends. Monsters. Maybe you like being monsters. You seem to, and that’s sick. It’s sad and it’s sick.”
No one spoke.
The wind carried the hungry cries of the dead.
“I’m just a kid,” said Rags, “so you probably don’t care anything about me or what I have to say. Maybe I’m wasting my breath. Maybe I’m being stupid and naive. I don’t know. I hope not, because I really don’t want these two men and their dogs to kill you. They would, you know. If I hadn’t asked them not to. If I wasn’t here. They’d kill you.” Rags shook her head. “Maybe even now, if I asked them to do it, they’d kill all of you. You can see that they would. That they could. They’re killers.”
Tom sighed again.
“But there’s a difference,” said Rags. “They’re killers, but they’re not monsters.”
She went over and handed the locket back to Mama Rat.
“Maybe you can stop being monsters too.”
Rags had to wait a long time before Mama Rat took the locket back. The woman’s hands were shaking as she wrapped them both around the locket, but Rags didn’t immediately let go of the chain. The brief tug-of-war forced the woman to meet Rags’s eyes.
“My family used to go to church,” said Rags. “When my family was alive. When there was a world. Every Sunday we’d dress up nice and go. Since all this started, I think I stopped believing in God for a while. Not sure I believe even now. It’s hard to believe in anything when everything is dying.”
As if in agreement, the dead moaned louder.
They were in sight now. A dozen of them, shambling through the park, coming from different directions. Not dangerously close yet, but coming. Definitely coming.
“One of the stories I remember from church,” continued Rags, “is the one about Cain and Abel. You know that one? Everyone does. They were brothers, and I forget why they had a fight, but Cain killed Abel. Bashed his head in. I guess that means Cain invented murder. When I first heard that story, I thought that it was going to end with God killing Cain. Like for punishment, you know? But he didn’t. He let Cain live. Cain’s pretty much the ancestor of everyone else. That’s crazy when you think about it. Cain, the guy who committed the first murder, is the one ancestor we all share. You’re white, I’m black, Tom’s an Asian guy—but we all go back to Cain.”
