The Hunger(86)

“I say we wait.” William Eddy stood in the middle of the gathering. He’d lost half his weight on the climb up the mountain and looked like a scarecrow. “I ain’t seen any signs of the disease in ’im myself.”

“But once it begins to show . . .” It was Peggy Breen. “Look what happened with Noah James and Landrum Murphy. It moves fast. We can’t wait until this Indian boy up and attacks people. Look around you—we’re down to mostly women and children. We got kids to think about.”

“It’s only an accusation,” Stanton pointed out. “There’s no proof other than Keseberg’s word.”

Peggy Breen crossed her arms. “Why would Keseberg shoot at the Indian boy if he hadn’t seen what he said he did?”

Mary drew back, her heart pounding. So Keseberg had claimed something about Thomas—claimed he had the disease. She didn’t know what Keseberg had said, but her stomach sank as she began to realize it didn’t matter. The idea was in everyone’s heads now.

They continued to argue but she had no doubt which way it would go. She felt weak, like she was about to drop to the ground. Mary ran up to Elitha and Thomas, who was stiffly buttoning his shirt. “The two of you, listen to me: Thomas has to run now.” When he gave her a quizzical look, she said, “They’re coming for you.”

He stopped doing up the buttons to stare at her. “What are you talking about?”

Amanda McCutcheon, in the corner putting away the spare bandages, glanced over her shoulder at them. Mary didn’t care.

“They’re afraid you’re going to succumb to the sickness.” She pushed a trunk against the rickety wall. “Keseberg says it’s why he shot at you. Says he saw something he didn’t like. You’ve got to climb up and slip out under the roof”—cowhides and tenting lashed haphazardly to the timber walls—“and run. Don’t look back. They’ll kill you if you stay, Thomas.” She wanted to think otherwise, but she’d seen how the group had become. Quick to target, even quicker to act. Paranoid. Panicked.

Thomas didn’t hesitate—it seemed he, too, understood the hopelessness of it. He started to climb onto the trunk but stopped, turning back to Elitha. “Are you coming with me? Or are you staying here?”

Mary’s heart went out to Elitha. To go with him was sure death. They would have no food, no weapons, and then there were those wolves, prowling the woods—whatever creature it was who’d started this contagion in the first place. And the snow; there was so much snow they’d never get through. And yet for Thomas, this was his only chance of survival. If he stayed, they would surely kill him.

But it wasn’t the same for Elitha.

Elitha ripped a blanket off the nearest pallet and threw it over her shoulders. “I’ll be right behind you. Climb.”

But the men rushed the shelter before Thomas could get over the wall.

Mary tried to block their way but her own father took her by the arm and dragged her out into the snow, holding her tight.

Red-faced Patrick Breen and his friend Patrick Dolan, Spitzer the German, and Lewis Keseberg grabbed Thomas’s legs, pulling him down. They hustled him outside, stepping past Mary and Elitha like they weren’t even there.

Mary went to chase after them but her father warned her, “You’ll only be hurt if you try to stand in their way.”

She managed to break free and pushed past him, Elitha on her heels.

Soon they were marching Thomas into the woods. Elitha caught up to them first, throwing herself at the two men holding Thomas’s arms behind his back, but the big German Spitzer brushed her aside like she was a gnat.

“Go back, girl. This ain’t for you to see,” Breen warned.

Mary struggled through the deep snow behind them. “You don’t have to kill him. Just let him go. You don’t have to worry about him—he’ll leave you alone.”

“He’ll turn wild like the others and then he’ll come for us. Maybe kill one of us, one of the kids. You seen what happened to Landrum. Is that what you want?” Dolan asked, his voice angry.

“You don’t know that! I swear we’ll go, you won’t see either of us again if you just give him a chance,” Elitha begged.

The men continued walking as though neither of the women had spoken, eyes fixed straight ahead. They walked until Breen called a halt. It was a still spot, with only a slight breeze riffling the branches of a nearby pine. You could barely hear voices drifting up from the cabins, the only sign of humans in all this wilderness. By now, Franklin Graves had caught up to them and yanked Mary back hard, with a look that said he wouldn’t let her have her way, not this time, for her own good and the good of their family. You can’t stop angry, unreasonable men.

The men stepped back from Thomas. Dolan lifted his rifle, bracing it against his shoulder.

Thomas was eerily calm. His eyes flicked to Elitha’s face. “You shouldn’t have followed me. Go back now. Please.”

Keseberg nodded in Elitha’s direction. “Make it easy on her. Tell her we’re right. Tell her you can feel the disease inside you.” But Thomas said nothing, choosing to stare over their heads.

Mary looked wildly from man to man, trying to think of a way to make them understand that they didn’t have to do this, but the words didn’t come to her. They weren’t interested in reason, however. They were slaves to their anger and fear.