Donners of the Dead (17 page)

I had to shake my head and steady my heart which started to skip over those last thoughts. It had been a dream, that’s all. There was no reason to think that Avery had turned into them. There was no reason to think my father had either.

Except for the fact that they both disappeared. One a few years ago, one a few days ago. But knowing what I knew now, what I’d seen, I couldn’t help but fear for their fates. For fates worse than death.

Suddenly I bumped into Jake’s hard back and gasped from the impact.

He turned around, one hand on my good shoulder and peered at me intently. “Ease up, Pine Nut. Did you hear what I said?”

I shook my head. “Sorry,” I managed to say.

“You have that look in your eyes again.” He leaned in closer, as if he was really examining me. With him so close, it was hard to meet his gaze. I looked down at his scuffed boots. My goodness he had large feet.

“That look,” he said, “that you had last night.” I froze. His hand on my shoulder tightened. “I wasn’t all that asleep. I saw your face. You had a scare.”

I think I’m having a scare right now.
I looked up at him. “Aren’t we all having a scare?” I squinted at him. “Or are you too bad and brave to be scared?”

“Oh darlin’,” he said, grinning, “I get scared. Perhaps about different things than you, but I do get scared. I ain’t too brave,” he leaned in closer, his breath freezing between us, “or too
big
to admit that.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I gestured helplessly to the gun. “At least you have that.”

“You’re right about that, though we both know an axe does a better job. But if you can shoot these apes in the face and at a close enough range, you can take their head off all the same.”

I shuddered.

He took the gun and placed it in my hands. “And that’s why I’m teaching you how to shoot one.”

“Avery already taught me,” I said with a frown.

“The boy had the right intentions,” Jake conceded, “but he did not teach you properly.”

He pressed the rifle harder into my hands so that my fingers had to curl around the cold, heavy weight. “This is life or death out here. I want you to be able to catch our food just as I want you to be able to blow the head off Hank. You hearing me?”

I nodded. I had to say, “I thought you said women shouldn’t handle guns.”

He straightened up and I let out a small breath of relief. “Actually, I reckon I said
you
shouldn’t handle a gun. Guess now I’m less inclined to believe that you’ll shoot me. Call it a hunch, but I’m starting to think you might even like me.”

I gave him a wry smile, trying to ignore my increasing heartbeat. “I’m not sure how accurate your hunches are.”

He tipped the brim of his hat up at me. “Probably more accurate than your aim will be.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I haven’t even tried yet.”

“Just keeping you on your toes. You do better when you’re feisty. Like most women, of course under different circumstances.” There was a salacious spark in his eyes that made me wonder what he was talking about. Then, as soon as I figured it out moments later, I turned away so he wouldn’t see my blushing face.

“All right, we better get started,” I said quickly. “It may take me some time to prove you wrong.”

“Pine Nut, you’ve already proved me wrong,” he said. “I have no doubt about this.” He took my elbow and led me further along the path, the rifle in my hands, until we came to a large clearing.

“Where are we?” I asked. The tops of marsh grass poked up through the snowdrifts like a shorn porcupine, while a few ponderosa dotted the area before it gave way to dense forest again.

“How should I know?” he said with a one-shouldered shrug. “But it gives us room for target practice. First you shoot the tree, then you shoot the rabbit, then you shoot the zombie.”

“Zombie?” I repeated.

He shrugged again. “I met a fella in Mexico who told me about some story from the West Indies. They believe in the walking dead down there. Witchcraft and what have you.”

I swallowed uneasily, thinking back to Frankenstein’s monster. “These aren’t the undead. These are monsters, horrible, terrible creatures far worse than that.”

“Hence why we have to shoot them. Now straighten up.”

He came over to me and gently positioned my upper body so that my posture was ramrod straight. Then he went around me so that his arms covered mine and his chest was pressed against my back.

“Relax,” he whispered in my ear, “you can’t shoot when you’re tense. I should know.”

“I thought you’d get relief once you shoot.”

He paused, his mouth at the back of my head. “I’m going to assume I’m taking that the wrong way.” His breath tickled.

What way was that? I tried to figure it out but he put more pressure on my arms, moving them to his liking. “That’s better,” he continued. “Just relax. I’m not hurting you am I?”

“No,” I said in a small voice. My shoulder twinged a little but it wasn’t bad. “Is this hurting you?”

“I’m a hard man to hurt,” he answered. He made me lift up the rifle and place it on my good shoulder. “You’re lucky it’s the other shoulder that’s wounded, otherwise I think this would sting.” He instructed me how to hold it properly and how to line up targets through the line of sight, the pointy triangle on the end of the barrel.

“Now you know how this works, right?” he said into my ear. I had to ignore the heat his breath was generating, the way it tickled down my neck and back. I had to. “You pull the trigger and the hammer comes down. The piece of flint strikes against the pan. There’s a spark. It ignites the powder in the pan, and in turn the powder in the gun. The bullet has nowhere to go but out.” His mouth came closer to my ear. “Right at your target,” he added in a gravelly voice.

I suddenly became acutely aware that he had ever so subtly pressed himself up against me until we were almost in an embrace. I didn’t want to say anything—and I didn’t want him to move. There was something about the way his rock hard, strong body was encompassing mine that made me feel more combustible than the rifle in my hands.

At the same time, these feelings inside my body and inside my heart were filling me with confusion and fear. I needed to concentrate. I needed to survive.

I don’t know how I found my voice, but I did. It was quiet and shaky. “Do I need to know how to load it?”

“Darlin’,” he said. “I can load a muzzleloader faster than anyone I know, and I still don’t think it’s going to be enough when the time comes.”

“
If
the time comes,” I corrected him.

His voice lowered. “You know it is coming. You know we’re not getting out of here without a fight. These mountains, those monsters, they won’t let us go so easily. It’s calm right now, and right now is where this moment will stay.”

“Like the storm clouds on the mountains.”

“Just like. They’ll come down soon and sweep away that sweet sunshine just as the monsters will come out of the trees at some point and try and sweep us away. Only difference is we can’t change the weather, but we can change our survival. We can’t shoot the clouds, but we can blast a damn bullet through one of their heads.”

His grip tightened around my wrists. “This is the moment. We need to take it.” His breath at my ear and my own breathing seemed to match, to build. Heat flared at my back. There was no cold, there was no chill. Just him. Just heat. “Aim at that first tree. Pull the trigger.”

I did.

The air exploded around us, and my hands felt like they were being ripped apart in a black cloud of powder. The force pushed me back into Jake, who held on and kept me steady, kept the rifle from dropping out of my hands.

“My word!” I exclaimed, trying to straighten up.

“It’s got a kick,” Jake said as he took the rifle from my hands.

I peered through the smoke that was hanging around in the cold air. “Did I hit the tree?”

He laughed. “No, you sure did not.”

I grimaced, suddenly defensive. “I wasn’t expecting that. You make it look so easy.”

“I make a lot of things look easy,” he said as he pulled the horn of powder from his holster. “But the secret is practice. You do something and you do it enough, you’ll be good at it. Even if you haven’t done it in a while, you’ll pick right up where you left off.” There was an almost velvety quality to his voice as he tapped the powder down the muzzle of the gun. “Everyone’s first time tends to be…awkward. The second time is always less painful. You may even enjoy it.”

I frowned at his tone, but he continued to load it and pointed out what he was doing. “Now remember,” he said, staring me square in the face, his dark eyes determined. “Gunpowder is highly combustible. The slightest spark, the slightest anything will set it off. Treat it with respect. Never look down the barrel. Never hold it near your face. You understand?”

I nodded quickly. I was still shaken from the first shot. He didn’t need to scare me twice.

“Now, I reckon you should get us our dinner.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “I beg your pardon, but I can’t shoot anything. You saw what I just did.”

“You took a good piece out of the air. That’s still something.”

“Jake!”

“Eve,” he said back and put the rifle in my hands. “Trust me. You’ll do just fine.”

“But I didn’t hit the tree and that wasn’t even a moving target.”

“I trust in you,” he said in a measured voice. “You will do just fine. Come on, let’s go get us something to eat.”

He steered me around so we were heading back the way we came. As we walked, I kept taking in the ground, watching for the prints of jackrabbits. We were quite high up in the mountains so I wasn’t sure if they would be around, but sure enough I saw some marks and droppings as we went.

As cute as I thought rabbits were, I’d grown up living off the land and had no problems eating them as food. I just didn’t think I’d be able to shoot one, and with each shot I would take, we would use precious gunpowder. I don’t know why Jake had faith in me to hit it, but he did. He did even if I didn’t.

He did, and he was one of the few people left alive that felt that way.

The jackrabbit looked as if it had veered off into the forest, so I automatically headed that way with Jack right behind me.

“You know something?” he said. “You ain’t that bad of a tracker.”

I scoffed. “It ain’t that hard when you’re following rabbit droppings on snow.”

“I mean it though. I’m glad you’ll be able to fend for yourself out here should anything happen.”

I shot him a worried glance over my shoulder. “That’s not exactly positive talk there.”

He smiled kindly, the tanned skin around his eyes crinkling. “I’m just being realistic. I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, but we both know the possibilities are there. With your gun and your tracking, you can find yourself all the way back home.”

“I’d rather not go it alone,” I murmured.

“As do I. And I give you my word I will do whatever I can to protect you while I can.”

“And I’ll protect you.” Even though we were still walking through the forest, my pace had slowed while that warm, intangible feeling came back to dance with me.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. The only sound was the soft crunching of snow beneath our boots.

He cleared his throat. “Not sure if I’m worth protecting, Pine Nut. First chance you get, you’re getting out of here. Take the gold and start a new life.”

“Is that what your plans are?”

“They were,” he said thoughtfully. Another pause. “Things change. Now my plans are keeping you alive and getting you back home.”

“And where will you go?”

“If I’m lucky, anywhere my heart desires.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that but it didn’t matter. A faint sound on the forest floor brought my senses away from my swirling heart all the way to my limbs. I froze as Jake did the same. I concentrated and could hear the delicate thumps continue to our left.

Without looking behind me at Jake, I raised the rifle up and aimed it low to the ground and right through a line of trees. If I was right, a rabbit would come bounding through at any moment and I would have to be quick.

I waited with my breath in my mouth, afraid to let go of it. Any minute now.

I put my finger on the trigger and prepared for the kickback.

The foul stench of death filled the air, seeping into my nose, my skin, my pores, and every single hair on my body stood on end.

The rabbit bounded past.

I didn’t shoot.

I was already turning around and looking at Jake with fearful eyes as he growled, “Run!” under his breath.

We took off through the forest, Jake careful to keep me in front of him as we ran. I hadn’t seen the monster but I knew it had been there, somewhere. It could have been in the trees above us, in the bushes below, behind boulders. It could have been anywhere, watching us, chasing us, wanting us, because all I could smell was that terrible odor, the one that made me want to both vomit and cry with fear.

It was enough to let me know it was there. Like Jake had said, our moment was over. Things were changing.

We ran all the way back to the cabin, and it was only as we entered the open, skirting around the frozen edge of Donner Lake, that I dared to look behind us.

There was nothing there, not that I could see, but the smell, I just couldn’t get it out of my brain.

We burst into the cabin, sweating and breathless. The silence was thick and there was another smell. Something cooking.

“Tim?” Jake yelled, and we both peered around the corner at the fire where Isaac was sitting in his long johns and stirring something in the giant pot. “Where’s Tim?” he asked Isaac.

“He’s gone,” Isaac said calmly. He eyed us. “Is something the matter?”

Jake sneered at him in disgust. “Yeah, Isaac, something is the matter. We’re getting the hell out of here. Where’s Tim?”

“I told you,” he said, looking back to the pot. “He’s gone.”

“What are you eating?” Jake asked, peering over at the pot. “Tim said there was no more food left.”

“I improvised,” Isaac said. “Tim isn’t as resourceful as I am.”

Jake patted the gun in my hand and whispered, “Keep an eye on him.” He turned and ran out of the cabin, yelling for Tim.