What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Author:T. Kingfisher
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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In the end it was Hob who located the hare, by virtue of nearly stepping on it. He spotted it at the last moment, snorted, and pulled sideways, hopping on three hooves. I was rather startled myself, particularly when the hare didn’t move. It just sat there, staring up at the pair of us with its wild, empty eyes.

“Go on,” I told the hare. “Walk a bit.” It would do me no good to shoot a hare that wasn’t afflicted by this nameless malady.

It did not oblige. I slid off Hob’s back and took out the gun I used on small game (not cows). “Come on, scoot.”

The hare stared at me. I took a step forward, then another. Christ, was I going to have to actually nudge the thing with my boot?

Before I touched it, it turned and began that strange crawling walk. It moved more rapidly than I would have expected. I took aim, only to watch it vanish into a stubby copse of trees, which were either dead or doing a remarkable imitation of it.

“My own fault for being slow,” I muttered. “Hob, stay.” I ground tied him and went after the hare.

The dead trees did not improve upon close inspection. I stepped inside the copse, looking for the hare, and found it sitting up, watching me.

“Right,” I said. “You’ve definitely got it, whatever it is.” I started to sight down the barrel, although I could probably have bashed it over the head with the butt of my gun just as easily.

Movement in the corner of my eye distracted me. I turned my head and saw another hare, moving in the same unpleasant fashion. It looked almost spidery somehow. I had the sudden absurd notion of a disembodied hand walking along on its fingers, or of living limbs separated from their owners. Clearly Denton’s dream had lodged itself in my brain.

I turned back to the original, only to find that a third had joined it. All three of them stood up on their hind legs, watching me.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention.

I shot one of them. It might have been the first of them, but they might also have been changing places. A child could not have missed at that range. The copse rang with the shot and the hare collapsed.

None of the other hares moved. They did not even flinch.

A wave of tinnitus struck in the wake of the gunshot, and as I waited for the ringing to subside, I realized that there could be even more hares behind me now and I would not hear them approaching.

Which meant nothing, I told myself. (I hate how the tinnitus seems to drown out my thoughts as well, so that I feel as if I’m shouting inside my own skull.) They were hares, not wolves. A hare might give you a nasty bite if you grabbed it, but it wasn’t going to go for your throat.

I knew all this, and yet every instinct I had began to scream that something was behind me.

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