When Aunamee smells that hot, putrid stench and feels that sudden, suffocating weight on his body, he wonders if someone has thrown a corpse at him. It's an odd attack, he thinks, but he still thinks of it as an attack, and immediately his self pity dissolves into white hot rage. He brings up his knee -- not to attack R, but to kick him away and find his real enemy -- and then he realizes who this is. What this is.

(He remembers his face covered in blood, the way he lunged, the way his head buried into Aunamee's stomach as though it were a stew.)

He still pushes at the boy with his legs, hard, and uses his elbows to hoist himself out of the hole.