Offspring by Jack Ketchum

trees they separated, First Stolen to disable the car and telephone wires, Second Stolen to wait naked and bloody in the shadows by the door that led to the kitchen until the Woman signaled to her that it was begun.
    The children climbed up into the trees, climbing swiftly, moving quietly as lizards out across the branches that swayed above the deck. Then they, too, waited, watching the people inside through the sliding glass doors.
    The people never moved. They sat in chairs watching the flickering colored lights. The man would speak or one of the women would speak. And that was all.
    The Woman waited beneath the house by the stilts that pegged it to the hillside until First Stolen joined her a few moments later. He nodded, grinning, his work accomplished.
    His teeth had recently been sharpened—the Woman had not noticed when.
    The ax he carried was strapped at head and handle to a long leather thong. He slipped his arm through and drew it over his head, slinging the ax across his back, preparing to climb the weathered stilts with her to the deck.
    First Stolen and the Woman were too heavy for the limbs of trees.
    But the climb was easy.
    The Woman looked into the trees and saw that the children were ready. She cupped her hands to her mouth and hissed like a cat. At the door that led to the kitchen she heard Second Stolen crying out as though wounded, whimpering, sounding frightened, heard her beat upon the door, and heard from inside the sounds of sudden movement, the people rising, alarmed, going to the door.
    Into her trap.
    Above her the children moved farther on the branches, ready to drop.
    The Woman and First Stolen began to climb.

9:40 P.M.
    Steven finally found the turnoff onto Scrub Point Road the third time he passed it. It was hard as hell reading maps in the dark—he wasn’t lying to the hitchhiker about that, he wasn’t much good at maps in the first place. All the same he knew he’d overshot it when he wasn’t in Dead River anymore, he was in Lubec, and then he turned around and overshot it again and hadn’t known he’d screwed up till Trescott.
    Anyway, here it was. Puking little sign you could miss in the fucking daylight.
    At first the road was macadam but that didn’t last long—it turned to dirt in a matter of minutes and he had to go slowly, worrying about how the Mercedes was taking the bumps. There were a lot of bumps.
    You paid this much money for a car, you wanted to take care of it.
    So it was slow. But Claire wasn’t going anywhere. Claire could wait.
    He thought about Claire—about screwing Claire, specifically—and felt the beginnings of a hard-on poke around in his tailored pants.
    It had been a while.
    It was funny how knowing that she’d divorced him made him want her all of a sudden. He hadn’t wanted her much the entire year before she threw him out. Of course part of that was the drinking. You’d drink a little and get a hard-on and want some, and then you’d drink some more and it wasn’t worth the trouble. You always paid for screwing your own wife anyway. Long ago he’d decided that. A woman thinks she’s loved, needed, she takes advantage. It was better to hang out with the boys at the Plaza bar and pick up a stray now and then.
    It wasn’t that Claire wasn’t desirable. Hell, most of the women he did pick up over the years weren’t nearly in her class. But they had the advantage of being easy. You could fuck them and then forget it. While Claire came with all her baggage packed and ready. You fucked her one night, you’re expected to take care of the kid the next—while she enrolls in some asshole night school or something. And then it’s one night a week, and then two. And pretty soon your life isn’t yours anymore.
    Even Marion was easier, and Marion had made demands of her own. He laughed. He still had some of the scars to prove it.
    He remembered Claire’s goddamn body, though. A sleek, long-limbed body.
    The woman was a racehorse. Tits and ass