“Hang the ashes.” That’s what Katie told me. She turned her head as she coughed again. More blood rumbled up from her throat. “When it’s over, burn me up real good and hang the ashes.” I wasn’t really sure that would keep them away, but I said yes, wanting to give her what comfort I could. I held her hand till it was over. I had to move fast once she quit breathing.
I stabbed her once at the base of the back of her skull, the blade sinking in to the handle. I built a big fire in the woodstove. I felt bad I had to chop her into smaller parts to fit, but I was determined to do as she wished. I stayed up all night, stoking it and adding wood when I needed to. Once it was done I slept a bit while the ashes cooled, the gun on the bed next to me. When I woke, I scooped the ashes straight into a burlap bag, scraping the inside of the stove to get it all. I tied the bag with rope and hung it by the door from a big hook I had pounded there. Mama, Papa, Dean and Jay were already in bags around other areas of the outside walls of the house.
I hadn’t seen a runner in days, so maybe the ashes worked, or maybe they were dying off, decomposing in the sun. In my best, most fantastical dreams, I hoped that the world beyond the woods had maybe found a way to stop it.
I sit eating a tin of beans and writing this for no one, and I listen real close. A few noises in the woods, but I don’t see any runners still. Maybe I’m finally safe. “Hang the ashes,” she had said, and I did. I hoped it was over, because there was no one left to hang mine.