Part 34 (1/2)

Or maybe it is a prayer, he thought. Maybe it always is.

”Come on, Savannah,” he said, slapping his hands together and moving to stand only a foot away from her, face-to-face. ”Come on, bud!”

His hands were empty. Frowning, he turned to search for the pipe. When he'd thrown up, he must have tossed it aside. No, no. Where the f.u.c.k are you? he thought as he scanned the floor until he located it. He'd worried that he might have broken it, but the pipe seemed intact. He stared at it, turning it over in his hands.

The night before, he had begun to experiment with the tune that Enoch had taught them. Lester had suggested that they work together, that he bring his son, Josh, over to Zeke's ranch and they practice how to influence their children with Enoch's pipes. Zeke had refused.What they were doing was both a miracle and an obscenity, and either way it was too intimate to share.

His hands and arms and back still hurt from digging up Savannah's grave. His muscles had burned as he'd thrown himself into the work, numbing his mind and heart so he would not let horror stop him, knowing she must have awakened down there in the cold ground along with the others. But he hadn't really believed it until he had used the shovel to smash the casket's lock and then pried open the lid and seen her moving, milky eyes staring blindly through the webbing of thread that had been used to sew her eyes shut.The thread had torn loose, her ripped eyelids almost instantly healing.A corpse, to be sure-she already looked so much better than she had last night-but a corpse resurrected.

Zeke had screamed, then, but not in fear or horror. He'd screamed out the pain and grief of her death and dragged her up into his arms and sat there cradling her inside her grave, whispering to her, promising her that he would do anything to bring her back to him, all the way back to him. She had been the light in his life, the sun around which his heart and soul revolved.

He would do anything.

Once he had more or less mastered the notes Enoch had taught them to play, he had put her into his truck and brought her home, cleaning her hands and face and feet but not willing to change her clothes. Eventually he would take off her dress and put her in a pair of jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt and boots, but not yet, because he didn't want to see the wounds on her chest and back where the bullets had entered and left her body.They'd have been sewn up, but he didn't want to see. Enoch said the wounds would heal, and so he wanted to give her a little more time.

”Time,” he whispered now, standing in the stable. Zeke took a breath.Time was really the only thing of value in the world- time to live, time to be with the ones you loved.

Stuffing the pipe into his pocket, he turned away from Savannah's catatonia and went to the vacant horse stall into which he'd seen the cat disappear. Zeke unlatched the door and dragged it open. Tony had curled into a pad of hay in one corner and jumped up as he entered. As Zeke approached, the mouser tried to bolt past him, but Zeke had been wrangling cats in the ranch's old buildings since he could walk and s.n.a.t.c.hed Tony up before he could escape.

The cat struggled, but Zeke carried him out of the stall and over to Savannah. He knew that he was supposed to use the pipe. Enoch had made it clear to all of them that it would be days before any of the dead could think clearly enough to direct their own actions.Their brains were not working properly.The ritual Enoch had taught them made it possible for others to give them direction, as if the notes the pipers played turned on some kind of motor inside them and the words of the pipers were their navigation.

Zeke wanted to believe it. He needed to believe that there was a happy ending, because having Savannah back like this was worse than having her dead.Anarosa would have cursed him for it. He could endure it if he could accept Enoch's promises, but in order for him to have that kind of faith, he needed just one glimpse of the future, one hint of awareness in Savannah's eyes to prove that she was still in there.

”Look, bud,” he said. ”It's Tony the Tiger. Remember him? Remember when Ginger had her kittens? She hid under the stable but you heard the mewling and you were the one who found them.You were such a big girl and when I told you that you could have one you knew right away it had to be Tony the Tiger. Remember the bows you wore when you-”

Zeke took a step closer to Savannah.The cat hissed and clawed his arms and he swore and dropped the beast. It raced the length of the stable and out the door, a rare excursion. It knows, Zeke thought, his stomach dropping. Even the d.a.m.n cat can see this is unnatural. It's wrong.

”G.o.d, what have I done?” he whispered, hanging his head in the shadows.

The noise might have been the creak of a beam or the s.h.i.+fting of one of the other horses, but it sounded to him like a soft moan, deep in his daughter's throat. He whipped his head around and stared at her, catching his breath as an impossible hope emerged like sunrise within him.

Savannah had not moved. Her gaze remained vacant and distant.

But there were tears on her face, streaking the dry, waxy skin of her cheeks.

”Bud?” he ventured.

Nothing. No reaction. But the tears were hope enough.

”All right,” he said, nodding firmly. ”All right.”