Page 5 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human
If Levi was here, he would’ve clocked the photo in an instant and put a finger against Jess’s temple like a cold metal muzzle.
“You find that gun cabinet and you keep an eye on it, girlie. If that poor fucker gets to it before you do: pshew. ” Gunshot noise from the corner of the mouth. “You’re out.”
Crane is studying it too closely. Jess clears her throat. “You, uh. Won’t have to worry about that.”
Fine. Time to show her the ropes.
This son of a bitch, as it turns out, is currently on the bedroom floor trying to get on his feet; key word being try because it’s not going well.
Crane wouldn’t be surprised if he’s being puppeteered by adrenaline alone.
There can’t be much else. His skull is dented, and the swelling is trying to squeeze his pale little eyes out of his face.
The latest attempt to stand fails. Gross, Crane thinks.
Jess wraps her arms around her ribs. She won’t come into the room. She stands in the hall, toes barely crossing where the vinyl floor cuts to cheap carpet, studying the torn-up doorframe and old plywood nailed over the windows. There are too many locks on the door. Some of them are broken.
“Yeah,” Jess says when Crane gives her a quizzical frown, making sure that this is: one, her boyfriend; and two, the state she left him in, not a total surprise. “Bad, right.”
Those words—or maybe Jess’s voice itself—sets him off. As much as someone can be set off with most of their brain destroyed. He swings his head around, tries to get an arm under him, can’t manage it. Saliva drips from his cockeyed mouth.
“Jess,” he slurs in the way half-dead people have a tendency to. “Jess.”
If they wanted to, they could wait this out.
That head trauma, that’s something else.
Seriously, what did she use? Crane sidesteps to check the room and finds a dumbbell halfway under the bed.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t such a bad decision.
This is why she was supposed to wait for Levi—he’d have talked her through it.
He’d have handled it like a soldier. He’s not here, though, so the two of them could honestly shut the door, head to the living room, flip through the TV channels, and check back in half an hour.
But any risk is too much, and Jess has to learn.
Crane sets the bag down on the bed, digs out a hammer, and flips it into his hand.
This guy must have some sense left in that brain, must be able to see something, even with all his gray matter scrambled up, because he starts moving again.
Trying to get away. Prone on his belly, he grabs the foot of the bed, hauls himself forward an inch, leaving a slick wet trail where he can’t pick his head up properly.
Crane plants a booted foot on the lower back—no, none of that, thank you—and nods Jess in. Let’s make it quick.
Levi would be explaining the situation right now.
Every detail, starting with whatever weapon was in hand that day.
It has to be a weapon with plausible deniability, he’d say, in case you bump into the law.
Mike used to keep a nail gun in his truck at all times; Harry carried a knife in the same bag as a pair of antlers and a hunting permit; Levi’s Mossberg shotgun is a self-defense model perfect for a rural county where 911 doesn’t pick up half the time.
A hammer’s an easy sell to a cop, so it’s perfect for a mute.
Jess steps cautiously into the bedroom like it has teeth—to her, it might—and tries to breathe through the mouth instead of her nose.
There we go. The man squirms and Crane puts more weight on him, clicking his tongue to keep Jess’s attention.
Don’t look at the windows, don’t think too much about what’s happening.
It’s already halfway done, and once you do it the first time, it’s easier all the others, promise.
Hammer in hand, pinkie outstretched, and crouched a bit over the struggling mess, Crane traces the path for her. Sketches where the damage has already been done, where she won’t have to hit as many times. Right here.
“I don’t know,” Jess whispers.
Crane gives her a stern look—or something to that effect, expressions are tough for him.
Yes, it’s difficult. She has to do it anyway.
The hammer goes into her hand, fingers pressed around the handle and rotated so she’s holding it the correct way, clawed end down.
Think of the guy on the floor as a stubborn nail she has to pull out and discard. That’s all.
The man, his swollen eyes drying out and pink foam bubbling out of his mouth, manages another word, or a vague approximation of English: “No,” it sounds like, “no.” Or maybe “oh,” over and over.
Whatever it is, it makes Jess stumble. It makes her push the hammer away, her eyes panicked-horse whirling.
“I can’t,” she says.
The fuck is she talking about. She can’t?
The hive chose her for a reason. The flies wouldn’t have crawled into this room as a horrible shimmering mass and coated the walls and buzzed in a disgusting cacophony if they didn’t want her .
Now she’s here, they saved her, and hives don’t appreciate it when their chosen people don’t return the favor.
He gets up. Takes his foot off the worm-food. Grabs her.
She makes the smallest, most terrified sound he’s ever heard.
It’s not happening, he realizes. He can’t force her—and if he does and it cracks something in her, shatters an irreplaceable piece of her psyche, then he’s not going to be the one to put her down. No way in hell.
Fine. He’ll do it himself.
To her credit, Jess doesn’t think she can get away with not watching it happen. She’s plastered herself to the threshold, fingertips resting perfectly along the claw marks marring the splotchy wood, but she does not turn away. Her eyes are trained on the hammer and the place it will come down.
Aspen and Birdie would be disgusted with Crane if they knew.
Crane hoists a leg over the man on the bedroom floor, puts all his weight on the back of the neck, and brings the clawed end of the hammer down twice.