Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby

Author:Madeline Ashby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

“An animal. An animal ate Fawn. And then Jong-soo. That’s your theory.”

Mason’s voice could soak up an oil spill. Distantly, Kristen remembers that some of his family are English. A few of them needed to renounce their Canadian citizenship to take some sort of parliamentary position in England. And then they came crawling back after one scandal or another, and Mason was sent to a boarding school for people with those kinds of problems, and that was where he first met Sumter. Sumter’s trust had funded his education in Canada, when that was the thing all the wealthy American parents were doing for their children.

“She was missing a chunk of her leg, Mason. How do you think that happened? You think she just stumbled into a grain harvester?”

“I don’t know! But we haven’t seen any animals here either, have we?”

The others say “No,” just as Nora Mae says, “It doesn’t matter.”

Pearce raises his eyebrows at Nora Mae. “It doesn’t matter?”

Nora Mae looks at him like he’s suddenly confessed to never passing kindergarten. “It’s a predator’s job not to be seen. Bears, big cats, coyotes: they can follow you for miles without you knowing. At least, they used to.”

It occurs to Kristen that she has not heard any birds, since they got here. No insects. Just silence. Death.

“Christ save us from more Native wisdom,” Brock mutters.

“Hey fuck you, Brock.” Nora Mae gives him the finger.

“Don’t you have something useful you could be doing?” Sumter speaks over his shoulder to Brock. His tone is clipped. “Like leading a search party? Pearce can’t do all of them.”

“I’m not going out there! Not if there’s some big, dangerous animal out there. No way. And speaking of which: What kind of pantywaist zombie apocalypse bunker doesn’t have guns?”

Brock crashes into a huge, vaginal-looking armchair and burrows deep into its upholstered folds. He’s eating more of the cricket snacks. The crumbs spill down his shirt. He’s eating like they already know for sure that another of his coworkers is dead, and so there’s one less mouth to feed from the stockpile in the pantry.

“Tiger traps,” Kristen says.

Sumter looks up. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Tiger traps. That’s how you hunt big game without a gun. You dig a hole, fill it with spikes, and cover it over so the game—whatever it is that you’re hunting—runs across and falls in.”

“Nice.” Jasper sounds impressed.

“It’s cowardly and disgusting. All game hunting is cowardly and disgusting.”

Nora Mae pulls a face. “What else would you hunt?”

The two women are sitting on the concrete bench protruding from the fireplace. If the fire were actually lit, they would be one good shove away from a witch trial. The fireplace certainly seems large enough to stuff a human being inside. “I meant for trophies, not subsistence.” Kristen remembers something Sumter said the night they found the house. “But, if this island were a game preserve, then there might be some animals still left. Right?”

Pearce looks up at the skeletons hanging over them. “That would make this place a big hunting lodge, wouldn’t it?”

Nora Mae nods.

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