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“Damn, Harlow. They’re literally working you to the bone.”
“No, it wasn’t too bad,” I assured her. “It’s because my hands were already torn up. And I had the most wonderful breakfast today with eggs and potatoes and fresh bread. What about you? Did you get to eat?”
“Yeah, they feed the field hands once a day at lunch, but we got a big pan of meat and vegetables. And it’s mostly not rotten, so that’s an improvement.”
Kimber had settled back into the hay, and she wrapped an arm around me so I would curl up beside her. It helped to keep the chill at bay, and I always felt better with her like this.
“So where do we go from here?” Kimber asked softly when I rested my head on her chest.
“I don’t think I’m strong enough,” I said. “And it’s still snowing and cold. I don’t know how well we’ll fair against the elements if we have to make a break for it with only the clothes on our backs.”
She pulled some of the clean hay over us, insulating us from the chill inside the stable.
“Do you think that Lazlo will come for you?” Kimber asked.
I didn’t like to think too much about Lazlo, because it always ended up with me worried about what was happening to him. But I thought about him often enough that I could answer Kimber. “If he’s alive, and he’s able, and he knows how to find us, then yes. I believe he would. But I don’t know about any of those things. And if he did find us and came here, what can he even do against the Loths? They’re armed and have trained attack zombies.”
I swallowed down my fear and my hopes, and I decided finally, “It’s better if he doesn’t, so that he’s safe. It’s better if we don’t count on him to save us.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s take some time to regain our strength, rest as much as they let us, and start looking for a way out. And when summer comes around, we’ll be ready to go.”
29
Harlow
The work at the house was physically demanding but easy enough to master. In fact, I already had a better handle on my duties than Avril, despite the fact that she’d been here months longer than me. She vacillated between forgetful and repetitive, and she had a tendency to drop things, including an antique picture frame when she’d been showing me how to dust.
The upside of Avril’s struggles was that I was left to my own devices within a matter of days, since my abilities easily matched hers.
One afternoon, when I was sweeping the kitchen, Elmyra’s middle son Wyatt came in. Most of his time was spent in the fields, and the little interaction I did have with him, he rarely spoke directly to me or anyone outside of his family.
“Where is Mama?” he asked, his words sharp.
“She told me she’d be outside with the grandkids on the carousel,” I relayed to him.
He cast his eyes toward the far window of the kitchen, and he let out an annoyed breath. “Can you fetch her for me? I need her help with something out in the barns.”
“Sure.” I set aside the broom and wiped my hands on the front of my skirt. “I’ll be back quickly.”
I went out the backdoor off the kitchen and hurriedly walked toward the carousel. Until now, I had only been able to catch glimpses of it from the house windows, and I was actually eager to see the ride up close.
All of the paint was chipped, half of the colorful lights were burnt out, and the mirrors in the center were cracked. The horses were faded shades of purple, blue, and green, and their faces had been carved with a creepy maniacal kind of glee. The distance had done the carousel many favors, because it was actually quite run down.
Elmyra was standing in front of it, her arms folded over her chest, as she watched her grandkids languidly spin around on the amusement ride. I wasn’t paying them much mind until one of the children began snapping and gnashing at the carousel pole that ran through his steed.
I stopped short in surprise, and my first instinct was to scream or run, my usual responses when I saw a zombie. But I only froze and tried to make sense of what I was witnessing.
There were five passengers on the carousel: three uninfected children that I had met, and two zombies.
One of the zombies was a child of about ten, and he was secured to a horse with a belt around his waist and rope binding his hands together.
The other was an old man, and he’d been a zombie long enough that he’d started to decay, with flesh flaking off his face like old paint, leaving dry red tendrils of muscle exposed. Much like the child zombie, he had a rope tied around his waist and attached to a pole, securing him in place. Unlike his younger counterpart, though, he wilted against the horse, with no attempts to escape, no signs of anger or hunger.
The child zombie was wild and vicious, snapping his teeth and biting at anything he could reach. Under his ashen skin, he was covered in purplish bruises, and his wrists and ankles were raw and bloody, as if he’d been frequently bound.
Even with all his flailing and growling, the uninfected kids appeared completely unbothered. They sat on the horses on the far side away from the zombies, and the youngest one was laughing in delight.
“Harlow?” Elmyra said in a way that made me worried this wasn’t the first time she’d called my name, and she was looking back over her shoulder at me. “Did you need something?”
