The Hunger(80)

They were stuck, among an ever-deepening landscape of snow and ice.

But there was one good thing about the snow, about their remote high nesting place in the mountains: It seemed the dead had not been able to follow her there. Even they knew to stay away from this cursed place. For the first time in months, her head didn’t echo with disrupted arguments and cussing and nonsensical conversations. Which left room instead to hear the moaning of her father, sick and bundled, still, at the back of their tent, where Tamsen tended to him hour after hour.

For the first time, she wondered if her father would die. Death had been chasing them a long while, she knew, but it had never gotten this close. Now it was at their heels like a begging dog; the smell of it was in their hair and under their fingernails. It was everywhere, and it was waiting.

Thinking of this made her miss Thomas, terribly. She missed the way he smiled at her when no one was looking, missed kissing him when they were able to steal a few moments alone. Now they were separated by who knew how many miles and snow so deep you could disappear in it, sink like a stone. No telling when she would see him again—if ever.

Then there were the things waiting for them in the woods. She knew what they’d seen in the basin was real. She knew whatever those creatures were, they were after them, biding their time.

The grown-ups did not like to talk about it, but sometimes, at night, when she woke to the sound of Tamsen weeping, or heard the crunch of her uncle’s boots outside the tents, she knew they were out there. Those times she knew, too, that the reason the ghost voices hadn’t followed her was because they were also afraid.

It was getting so hard to find dry firewood. There was talk of burning the wagons, or trying to take down a tree. They were eyeing the oxen, too, as food got low. There was grass under the snow, but the cattle couldn’t get enough to keep them alive and they would start dying soon. “Either that or those things out there will get them,” Uncle Jacob had said bitterly. That was what he called them—because no one could say for sure what they were. Shadows. Shapes in the darkness. As though their worst inner fears had taken shape and grown limbs, as though the demons that had often visited Elitha’s mind in the form of voices had sprouted into half-living monsters come to haunt them all.

She had overheard Aunt Betsy whispering to her husband one night: “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” He had no response.

That was when the bad thing happened. They were huddled together in the tent one evening, listening, always listening now. They were packed tight, sixteen people in a tent that usually held just one family. All the bodies kept them warm, warm enough to stink of sweat and oils and all the rest that came with a body. The air was thick with expelled breath. Outside, two of the teamsters were on guard with rifles, acting as lookouts and keeping the bonfires fed.

Then: an unmistakable scrabbling outside the tent. There was no door, only an old cowhide hanging over the opening, so that bitter cold air slipped past its edges and froze whoever was sitting nearest. Something was standing right outside the tent, separated by only a flimsy bit of hide.

Everyone looked up. Aunt Betsy stopped singing. Fear brought its own kind of cold, freezing the air in Elitha’s lungs. Why hadn’t the men on watch called out?

They were dead, perhaps. She had a sudden image of the teamsters gutted, and charred creatures with human hands picking at their ribs. They were already steaming out their heartbeats in the snow.

Uncle Jacob grabbed up his rifle and pulled back the hammer. “Who’s out there?” He got to his feet, crouching to avoid the low ceiling.

No answer. Then there was the crunch of a foot on snow, then another.

The cowhide started to lift . . .

Aunt Betsy screamed as if someone had grabbed her.

Jacob fired. The flash lit up her uncle’s face, alien and terrible in the glare. The tent filled with gun smoke. Elitha’s baby sister Eliza screamed and the little ones began to cry.

Outside, someone screamed, too—a high-pitched shriek so unexpected and childish, Uncle Jacob froze. It was Tamsen who pushed the flap aside, to find Virginia Reed—Elitha’s friend, though she hadn’t seen her since their families separated—on her back in the snow, the right arm of her boiled-wool coat dark with blood.



* * *



? ? ?

THEY CARRIED HER INSIDE and Elitha’s father was rousted from his pallet to make way for her.

“I’ll never be able to explain this to her mother if she dies,” Jacob said, as Tamsen eased off Virginia’s coat. It was a funny thing to say, Elitha thought; did he really think they’d ever see the rest of the wagon train again? The distance between camps might as well have been an ocean. Then again, Virginia had found her way here, somehow, and on her own, it seemed.

“It looks like the shot just grazed her, thank God,” Tamsen said. “She’ll pull through if it doesn’t get infected.”

Jacob was still white-faced. “What is she doing here? By herself, in the middle of the night?”

“Maybe there’s trouble, wherever the rest of them are. I hope to God whatever it is, it didn’t follow her here,” Betsy said, wringing her hands. Jacob was still breathing hard and was pale as a sheet. He was back on his stool with his head in his hands, the rifle out of arm’s reach.

Elitha sat next to Virginia, willing her to wake up. She considered Virginia her best friend among the girls of the wagon party, and felt terrible; she had forgotten all about her, and had spent little time with her since meeting Thomas. She hadn’t even missed Virginia; all her concern had been for him.