Melody smiled briefly and then squared her shoulders, standing up straight. “They’ll dry up soon. Just take him. Really. I’ll be okay.”

Winky shook her head and took a step back. “Hell to-the-no. I don’t want that baby. It’s not mine.”

Melody frowned. “Whose is it?”

“They said it belongs to the cannibal girl,” said her sister.

“Who? Brittney?”

“Yeah.”

“You guys know her?” asked Rob, coming over to join us.

“Yeah. She went to the same school as us, back in the day,” said Kiersten. “Mean girl. Totally vicious.”

“Nothing’s changed there,” said Winky, her words loaded with meaning. “She made us chop this baby’s head off, so I’m pretty sure he’s better off with you.”

Melody pulled the baby back into her chest, gently tugging the blanket back to examine his neck. “You seem to have missed,” she said, studying his face closely and smiling absently. She looked mesmerized, unable to tear her eyes away from his. He stared back up at her, no longer fussing, one little hand escaping to wave around. She took it in hers and gently kissed his tiny fingers, one at a time.

“We just pretended to kill him,” Winky explained. “The blood on the blanket isn’t his. So essentially, we rescued him from a mentally deranged killer, and you need to keep him safe here so she doesn’t come after him.”

Kiersten nudged her sister. “So what do you think? Are you okay with taking in a cannibal baby?”

Melody’s face lifted quickly and she glared at her sister. “Don’t you dare say that about him. All babies are innocent. We are not our parents!”

“God, I hope so,” breathed out Kiersten. She looked at me, nodding her head. “We accept your deal. You can have Bodo, so long as you leave the baby with us and release any claim on him.”

“Done,” I said without hesitation, holding out my hand so she could shake it. Winky put hers on top of ours and so did Melody. We moved our hands up and down in tandem, all of us smiling.

“Sorry we kind of overdid it with Bodo. He’s going to be a little bit hard to move for a while,” Kiersten said, smirking.

“How long?” asked Rob.

“A few hours? So why don’t you stay and have some food with us. You can go when he can walk.” She looked at each of us and added, “I promise you’ll be safe. No one will mess with you while you’re here. You get a free pass today.”

I looked at the others and they nodded. I wanted to get the hell out of there, worrying that if we stuck around they might change their minds. But Bodo couldn’t even stay awake, and I had a feeling he’d collapse to the ground if he were released from his bonds, so I agreed to stay.

“Sure. We’ll leave in a few hours. But, uhhh, not to offend you or anything … but we don’t eat, you know … people.”

“Neither do we. But I hope you don’t have issues with vegetables, because we’re mostly vegetarians here.”

“Mostly?” asked Winky.

“We eat an occasional dog or fish if we can catch it, but only enough to keep our strength up.”

I swallowed hard, thinking of poor Buster less than two miles away. “Yeah, I’ll pass on the dog, but vegetables sound good to me.”

Kiersten gestured towards the fire, yelling out to the girls. “The festival has now officially begun. Bring the food and Alejandro. Let’s celebrate our new addition!” She gestured to the baby bundle and Melody held him up, smiling from ear to ear.

The girls started whooping for joy, several of them running up the stairs to do their leader’s bidding and the rest coming to swarm around Melody and her adopted offspring.

I spared a moment to look at the new mom again; she had quieted the baby’s newest fit by giving him her breast, and the look of utter rapture and calm on her face made me almost jealous.

I left her to run up the stairs to Bodo, reaching his side in seconds.

I could hear all kinds of things happening around me, but all I could think about was Bodo. He was passed out, or appeared to be - hung over with his head dropping down to his chest. I put my hands on either side of his face to lift it up.

He jerked his head out of my grasp and struggled hard against the ropes holding him for a moment until his eyes focused and he realized it was me.

“Ooooh, hey dare, Bryn. Is dat really you?” He squinted his eyes and shook his head a little.

“Yeah, it’s me.” I was grinning like an idiot. I couldn’t help it.

“You look happy,” he said, smiling back for a moment. Then his smile turned into a frown. “Are you with dem now? Are you going to rape me, too?”

I laughed, grabbing him into a bone-crushing hug. “No, you idiot. I’m here to rescue your stupid butt.”

“Oh, dat’s a relief,” he said over my shoulder. “You are here to rescue da meat.”

I backed off my hug to look at him. His head was up but still bobbing a bit.

“Meat?” I asked. “They weren’t planning to eat you, Bodo. You know that, right?”

“Man meat. Dey want me to be da man meat. Not for eating but for da sexy time. Dat’s what dey said. But Bryn, I see dat I really don’t like to be a piece of man meat at all. Dat’s a problem for me. It’s a bigk problem.”

I hugged him again, patting and rubbing his back, trying not to giggle. “Yeah, I understand. I wouldn’t like being treated like meat either.”

“Man meat. It’s man meat.”

“Yeah, sure. Man meat.”

Alejandro had been released and wandered over to join us. “Hi, Bryn. I’m Alejandro, as you already know.”

I let Bodo go so I could shake his hand. It was warm and dry, very unlike Bodo’s clammy skin.

“You don’t look very drugged-out compared to Bodo.”

“Oh, I’m not. Not at all. I’m stone-cold sober, actually.”

I lifted my eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got an awesome gig here.” He looked out and gestured to the fire and the people gathered around it. “I’ve got twenty-odd women worshipping the ground I walk on, any number of them wanting to have sex with me at all hours of the day. They feed me, keep me clothed, protect me from the crazies … it’s different than before, but hey … it ain’t all bad.” He grinned.

“Man meat!” burst out Bodo, slurring his words. “Dat’s all you are. Man meat.” His head flopped down again.

“What’d they give Bodo?” I asked.

“Shrooms. That girl Kiersten is a mad freakin scientist, man. She’s, like, a genius or something. She was in college already when the crap went nuts around the world. She came back home to be with her sister and started working on her master plan.” He used his fingers to make air quotes.

“Master plan?”

“Yeah. You heard her. They’re gonna repopulate the earth with peaceful people who don’t want to start wars and stuff.”

Bodo was looking at me again, staring over the top of my head. I reached up and smoothed my hair, paranoid it looked really bad.

Alejandro leaned over and snapped his fingers in Bodo’s face a couple times. “Wake up, dude. Your girlfriend’s here to take you home.” He looked at me. “Where do you guys live, anyway?”

I sighed, my brain forcibly jerking itself back to my other troubles - the ones that had temporarily taken a back seat to my Bodo issue but would soon be front and center again.

“We were living … with some friends. But we’re moving to a prison south of here.”

Alejandro nodded. “You were with those guys in the swamp, huh?”

“Yeah. How’d you know? Did Bodo tell you?”

“Nah,” said Alejandro, frowning and shaking his head. “Everyone knows they’re out there. The crazies were talking about it all the time.”

I took a step closer to Bodo, feeling very protective of him. “How would you know that?”

He shrugged. “I used to live on one of the streets down from their place. I heard stuff.”

“You were one of their spies,” I said, my eyes narrowing, my hands itching to choke him.

“Not really. They came by and asked us what we saw while they were busy sleeping or whatever … but there was nothing to see. Not as far as I was concerned,” he said, smiling.

I cocked my head to the side, not sure I understood. “You mean you lied to them?”

“Every chance I got,” he responded, pride in his voice.

“But what about your neighbors?”

“What about them?”

“Well, if they were telling the truth and you were lying, it wouldn’t take very long for the canners to realize you weren’t on their side.”

“Pfft. No one was on their side. Not in my ‘hood. We met when they were sleeping and made our own plans. We saw you guys come in that day. Why do you think your car stayed all fine and wasn’t missing when your guy came back for it? And who the hell do you think came and got your boy here and took him out of there when the place was going up in smoke?”

“That was you?” I asked, not sure I understood everything he was saying.

“Yeah. That was me, and my bros. But that crazy bitch in the upstairs room picked a few of them off before Kiersten and her crew came in and nabbed me and Bodo.”

“Sounds confusing.”

“It was. Serious shit was going down, and there was fire and yelling and shots going off. I couldn’t tell if they were from a person shooting or their arsenal exploding. Some of those assholes got away, though, I know that. Kiersten’s group didn’t get them all.”

“I thought she was friends with them,” I said, noticing she had left her sister and was headed our way. I was freaking out, thinking he wouldn’t answer me before she got there. I needed to know the answer to this question.

“Nah. She used them for sex and information. They had a truce, mainly because those guys were tired of raping boys, I think. They appreciated getting a fresh piece once in a while, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s just sick,” I said. “And I thought they couldn’t stoop any lower than they did.”

“Oh, trust me. They stooped as low as a person possibly can.”

I swallowed hard, realizing that Bodo had been with these girls and Alejandro the entire time I’d been back in Kahayatle - almost a week. I’d been trying to convince myself that he’d been hiding out, looking for Nina, but now I knew he’d been a prisoner of a houseful of horny Amazon women. What has he been doing here all this time? I looked at him and then at Alejandro’s smiling face. I wasn’t sure I was going to be happy with the answer, but I had to ask anyway.

“Did you guys … you know … like, have orgies and stuff while you were here?”

Alejandro laughed, “No, man, I wish. They’ve been feeding us and getting us ready for the ceremony. They want to keep it all, I don’t know, legit with the moon and nature and shit.”

“Say what, now?”

“I don’t know. They’re doing some kind of earth religion thing. They’re worshipping the moon and the elements and all kinds of stuff. I just go with the flow, dude. So long as they don’t eat me, I’m all for it.”

“So, Bodo’s just been hanging out?”

“Nah. He’s been trying to get out. Escape. If he’s not trying to climb a wall, he stands outside and just looks up in the sky half the day, like he’s wishin’ he could fly. They’ve had guards on him the whole time, but no one was allowed to touch us until tonight.”