Donners of the Dead (18 page)

I stared at Isaac and he stared right back at me, his eyes glinting coldly despite the fire’s warm glow.

“You’re a pretty girl, you know that,” he said.

I pressed my lips together in a hard line and waited for Tim to come back. Isaac was crazy; I couldn’t converse with a madman.

He dipped his spoon into the stew and ate a few bites. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat back in his chair. “I never was a good cook like Jake was. I’ve been eating this and eating this and it just don’t taste right. It’s hard to make do when all you have is a pinch of pepper.” He looked to me. “I’d offer you a taste, but I’m afraid I’d no longer have an advantage.”

I had to ask. “An advantage?”

He nodded slowly. “You’re weak. I’m strong. It’s how I’ll win.”

My throat felt thick. Oh, why wasn’t Jake coming back? “Win what?”

“Have you ever heard of selective breeding?”

“No,” I answered cautiously, hoping he wouldn’t indulge me.

“It’s the theory that if you only breed—create—strong animals, they will only create stronger animals, and in the end, only the strong survive. They have the advantage.” He smiled absently, clearly suffering from dementia, and looked back at his stew. He stirred his spoon around in it until food from the bottom surfaced at the top.

Within the thick, brown liquid I saw an odd white shape.

An egg?
I thought to myself.
Where on earth would he get an egg?

Only it wasn’t an egg.

It looked at me.

Isaac scooped it up in his spoon.

And it
looked at me
.

“I win,” Isaac said before he shoved the eyeball in his mouth.

And all at once it hit me. The smell of death that wouldn’t leave my nostrils wasn’t an after effect. It was here in the cabin with me. Death was all around me.

Unable to look away, I noticed another eyeball in the stew and what looked to be a toe.

Tim was in the stew.

Isaac was a monster.

Isaac had the advantage.

I opened my mouth to scream when I should have raised my gun and fired. The timing cost me.

Suddenly Isaac was at my side, and he backhanded me so hard I flew back in a sea of stars and clouds.

“Do you see now?” he bellowed.

I tried to get up from the floor, I tried to get the gun, but Isaac was at me, stepping on my wrist and about to break it. I stared up at him through the wild hair in my face, everything moving and dizzying. This wasn’t real. Not now.

“Do you see how you’ll lose?” he continued, his voice seething. “And I will win. And others like me will win until we consume the entire human race. This pathetic human race. We will be apart. We will be separate. We will live forever. We will be unstoppable.”

“I reckon I can stop you,” came Jake’s voice. Hard and steady as always.

In the nick of time, as always.

Isaac whirled around to face Jake who was standing in the doorway with a revolver pointed at him. I yelped in pain as he took his foot off me. I tried to scoot away, my throbbing wrist in my hand, until I was backed up against the wall. I eyed the rifle which I couldn’t get to without Isaac noticing.

“McGraw,” Isaac said. “You were the best shot, the best man. I brought you because I thought your morals could easily be bent. Everyone’s heard the rumors about you, that you’re a killer with no heart and no soul. You cut the necks of puppies and rape the finest women.” I widened my eyes at that and looked to Jake. He was staring daggers at Isaac, but he wasn’t moving and he wasn’t reacting. He was keeping as still as possible, his gun trained on him.

Isaac continued, “And yet you looked at me and Hank yesterday as if we were the scourge of the earth. That disappointed me. How strong you could have become if you chose this eternal life.”

“It’s not eternal,” Jake said.

He pulled the trigger and the bullet soared through Isaac’s head. It never came out the other side.

Despite everything, I expected Isaac to fall down, to crumple, to die. But he just stood there, his back to me, and started laughing. He was shot in the head, in the face, and he was
laughing
.

Chills ran down my spine. The same chills gripped my chest with an iron fist the moment Isaac turned his head and stared down at me. Half of his face was gone, his eyeball blasted into his skull leaving a dark red and black hole of bone, brain, and blood. It was so disgustingly gory it didn’t even seem real. How could it?

And yet, as Jake loaded up, Isaac talked to me. “Only the strong survive, because the strong have no fear.”

Despite the very real fear and horror I was feeling, I had to give his words a second thought. They sounded so similar to my father’s.

Another gun blast made me jump out of my daze. This time Isaac lunged toward me just as Jake took his shot. The bullet whizzed somewhere overhead while I screamed and tried to fight off Isaac.

His hand went around my throat, and his open, bloody mouth went for my face.

I
saac was going
to eat me alive.

“Eve, don’t move!” Jake yelled, as if I could.

There was a thunk and suddenly Isaac lurched to the side, sputtering blood from his mouth which sprayed all over me. He didn’t fall over, and the grip on my neck barely loosened but it was enough for me to rip myself away from him. I scrambled out of his reach just as Jake pulled me up.

Isaac was moaning like a crazed animal, blood pouring from the back of his head. It was then that I noticed Jake hadn’t shot him—he’d thrown his gun at him instead.

I looked at him, openmouthed.

He gave me a grim smile. “No time to reload.”

He then went for the gun that was lying beside Isaac but Isaac wasn’t as hurt as he seemed. No, of course he wasn’t. Not with Tim’s flesh rolling through his system, putrefying his veins.

He sprang up and jumped on Jake. I never would have believed that skinny Isaac would be able to overtake such a muscular beast as Jake, but he did. They both fell to the floor, Jake’s mass shaking the cabin. He tried his best to fight off Isaac, and I remained frozen in place, trying to figure out what to do. If I tried to pull Isaac off of him, he’d only bat me away like a pesky fly.

I spun around and ran to the rifle I dropped early and picked it up, ever so wary of it accidently going off. I stepped right up to Isaac and aimed it at the back of his head. But at this range, with Jake’s own head right underneath his, his face growing red with strain as he tried to keep Isaac back, I’d kill both of them. Or I’d at least kill Jake.

I looked around and spied the axe resting against the wall near the fire. I gently but quickly placed the rifle on the ground, far away from Isaac and Jake, and ran over to the axe. It was heavy and cold and hard to wield between my two hands, but I had to try and make do with it.

I scampered back over to them, trying to raise the axe above my head, my eyes glued to the back of Isaac’s neck, which was now coated in a stream of sticky blood. This seemed impossible but there was no time to be realistic here. Realism would kill us all.

“Jake don’t move!” I yelled, my arms shaking, my wrists burning.

He grunted something in response but I was already in motion. I brought the axe down, feeling gravity take the weight the rest of the way, and somehow the sharp blade connected with Isaac’s neck. The sound was sick and thudding, like the way Uncle Pat used to slice through hardened meat.

Isaac roared and tried to get up but his movement merely put the blade in further. There was a crunch as it cut through the spine and then the roaring stopped. I let go of the axe in horror at what I had done and it stayed put, lodged deep inside. Not deep enough to slice his head clean off, but deep enough nonetheless.

“Grab the rifle and run to the horses,” Jake said to me as Isaac collapsed on top of him in a mess of blood and fluid.

I did as he asked, hearing the thump of Isaac and the thump of his decapitated head as Jake finished the job. He joined me moments later. With Sadie and Isaac’s horse gone from yesterday, there was only Jake, Tim and Hank’s horses. As much as I hated Hank and still feared him, I couldn’t leave his horse out here in the mountains.

I quickly attached him to Tim’s horse and started throwing the packs onto his back. Tim had pretty much finished the job of packing everything up. He must have gone back inside to get a few more things when he found Isaac inside, plotting his demise. As duplicitous as Tim had turned out to be, I had a soft spot for the charming old man and wished he hadn’t died in what must have been the most horrific way possible.

When I was done, I mounted his horse and Jake came jogging out of the cabin, absolutely covered in blood, the axe in his hands. Even though I had just witnessed it with my own eyes, it was still hard to comprehend.

He ran up to his horse and secured the axe to his saddlebags and jumped on. “Toss me the rifle.”

I did as he asked, wincing. But he caught it safely and brought his horse right beside me. He handed me a revolver. “This will be easier to shoot when you’re up there.” His eyes became dark. “We’ll have to ride hard, you understand. Isaac is dead, we both made sure of that, but there are others out there. I feel it, deep in my bones that we aren’t out of the worst of it. Are you ready?”

“More than I’ll ever be.”

He gave me a curt nod. “Then let’s get off this mountain.”

I quickly stuffed the revolver into the holster that ran across the front of Tim’s saddle and wheeled the horse around as Jake yelled at Trouble, kicking him a few times.

All three horses took off in a mad gallop, as if they knew they were leaving death behind. The frozen expanse of Donner Lake disappeared behind us.

*

When Jake said
we had to ride hard, he sure wasn’t kidding. We rode as fast as we could through the rough terrain, past the twisting places where I had originally lost Avery. My heart lurched with sadness at the memory, but I had no choice but to put it aside for now. I could only hope that he was still alive and still Avery.

We were lucky the weather held up and the temperature kept climbing the further down the mountain we went. There was still snow, but it was hard-packed and easy to navigate. Our horses were frothing with foamy sweat, and despite twenty minutes where I had to beg Jake to let them walk and get water from a partly-frozen stream, they were pushed to the limit.

As was I. Jake was adamant that we keep going all through the day, until either we or the horses collapsed.

Well, I was the one to collapse first. It must have been the middle of the night, Jake lighting the way with the lantern dangling from his hand, and I, cold and delirious from the constant motion and lack of food. I felt my eyes closing, my consciousness slipping, and everything went away.

When I woke up I had no idea where I was. All I knew was that I was warm and somewhat comfortable. The world around me was still and silent except for the gentle crackle of a fire.

I heard someone breathe out heavily. I lifted up my head to see Jake sitting across the fire from me, knife in hand, skinning a raccoon.

“Glad to see you awake, Pine Nut,” he said in a low voice. He lowered his eyes to the task at hand and gave me a half shrug. “Was starting to think you might never wake up.”

I groaned and eased myself up on my elbows. I was lying beneath a few animal hides with a thin one beneath me. I looked around to see I was tucked under a lip of a rock face, a small shallow cave that had just enough room for me to sit up in. The fire was outside in the open with Jake situated on a short log.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You right fell off your horse, that’s what,” he said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t notice till you hit the ground. You were out.” He swallowed hard and ran his hand through his thick hair that gleamed in the firelight. “Gave me quite the fright.”

I scooted closer to the fire and sat cross-legged. “And here I thought you didn’t get frightened.”

He looked up and gave me a tight smile. “I said I got scared about different things. This,” he quickly pointed the knife at me before going back to skinning, “you. That’s what scares me.”

“I scare you?”

His lip twitched up into a smirk. “You’re terrifying.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it, unsure of what to say. Finally, awkwardly, I said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said quickly. He put the knife down and lifted up the pink raccoon carcass. “I haven’t felt scared in years. It’s a nice change.”

I watched him carefully as he sharpened a thick branch and stuck it through the raccoon, then placed the animal between two Y-shaped sticks, creating a spit. He worked with ease, despite the injury on his shoulder. I was watching that wound too, but so far it hadn’t bled through the gauze or his shirt. Patches of dried blood clung to his clothes and on his neck, but the rest of him looked clean. When I listened hard I could hear a stream babbling nearby.

“Where are we?”

“No idea. Somewhere near the first cabin we stayed at but not near enough.”

“Are the horses are okay?”