As she lifted her eyes to the sun, she felt the stirrings of emotions and uncertainties and terrible certainties she had been storing.

"Oh gods," she said quietly. "Oh gods."

She knew so many things, she realized. So much was clear to her now-and so much that was terrible, that she balked at confronting, that she could not think about just yet. She had understanding and knowledge inside her, but she shied away from it as if from a bully.

That day, Bellis ate and drank and walked as if nothing had changed, her motions as jerky and fumbling as those of all the other traumatized around her. But at odd moments she would wince-she would blink and hiss and grit her teeth-as the knowledge inside her moved. She was pregnant with it-a fat, malign child that she was desperately ignoring.

Some part of her knew that she could not batten it down, but she played herself for time, never vocalizing, never thinking in words, always closing off the understanding she carried with an angry, frightened sense of Not now, not now…

She watched the sun set from her rough-cut windows and read and reread her letter, trying to steel herself to write something about the battle, not knowing what to do. At ten o’clock she heard a peremptory knocking, and opened the door onto Tanner Sack.

He stood on the little platform that jutted from the smokestack beyond her door, at the top of the stairs. He had been wounded in the fighting; his face was cut and septic, his left eye puffed closed. His chest was bandaged, the ugly tentacles springing from it wrapped close to him. Tanner was holding a pistol aimed at Bellis’ face. His hand was unwavering.

Bellis stared into it, into the pit at its end. The fat, hateful understanding that she had nurtured came out of her, unstoppable. She knew the truth, and she knew why Tanner Sack was ready to kill her. And with an exhaustion she knew that if he pulled the trigger, if she heard the blast, that in the sliver of a second before the bullet burst her brain, she would not blame him.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"You murderous fucking bitch."

Bellis gripped the back of her chair, gasping with pain, blinking to clear her eyes. Tanner Sack had hit her once, a hard backhanded slap that had sent her into the wall. The blow seemed to have taken the physical anger out of him and left him with only the strength to speak to her, hatefully. He kept his gun aimed at her head.

"I didn’t know," said Bellis, "I swear to Jabber I didn’t know." She felt little fear. Mostly, she felt a thick shame and a confusion that slurred her words.

"You fucking evil shit," said Tanner, not loud. "You fucking bloodsucker, you bitch, you bitch, fuck you…"

"I didn’t know," she said again. The gun did not waver.