Donners of the Dead (21 page)

“Eve, get up!”
Jake’s haggard voice broke through my dreams. I groaned, feeling a sore ache between my legs, and rolled over. I had slept like a log. The light was grey; morning was here.

And all was not well.

“Eve!” he yelled again, and the hides were suddenly thrown off me. I yelped and scrambled for my long stays and quickly covered up my indecency.

I suppose I wasn’t moving fast enough though as Jake tried to get me up. He grabbed my arm and pulled.

“What is it?” I cried out, feeling the panic rolling off of him. When Jake panicked, I knew something was very wrong.

“We have to go. The horses are gone.”

My stomach sank. “What do you mean the horses are gone?”

“I mean they are gone,” he said. He grabbed the pack that was in the corner and shook it. “This is all we have left.” He rummaged through it and pulled out two bars of gold. “Thank the damn Lord we at least have this.”

“Did they take off in the night?” I asked. I had been too involved with him last night to have been paying the horses any attention. “Weren’t they hitched to a tree?”

“They certainly were. I made sure of that. I didn’t want to risk losing them to their free-roaming fancies when we’re all the way out here.” He paused. “There are tracks too.”

“What kind of tracks?” I asked slowly.

“Human tracks,” he answered grimly.

At that, I quickly shoved on my stays and dress—I wouldn’t have bothered with the corset even if he hadn’t destroyed it—and slipped on my boots. “I don’t understand,” I finally said, my heart racing. “If it was…them…why didn’t they take us too?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps they knew we’d put up too much of a fight. They are weak without human meat, least that’s the way I reckon.”

“So they ate the horses instead?” I asked, horrified.

“Either that or they took them to ride them.”

“They couldn’t. You’ve seen them. They’re too much like animals to have that kind of thought.”

“True,” Jake said as he started folding up the hides and threw everything back into the pack. “But Isaac was still fairly human when we found him, probably because he hadn’t eaten all of the stew. Perhaps they go in and out depending on how much meat they’ve had, perhaps they have to resort to other sources of meat to stay alive. They’ve lived in these mountains for long enough, they have to be surviving on something. The animals probably give them another few days to live, just as they would to us.”

“Then they might be around here watching us,” I said, my stomach still sick over the idea of the monsters eating Trouble. Judging from the pained expression on Jake’s face, he felt the same way too. “Do you think the horses can turn? I saw what happened to our neighbor’s horse, Nero.”

“I don’t know what that was. Perhaps just an omen.”

An omen I should have paid attention to.

“What are we going to do?” I asked as I crawled out of the cave and surveyed the scene. Sure enough, the horses were gone. The smell of rotted flesh competed with the smoldering ashes of the fire. The tracks left in the snow were a mix of bare feet and boots. It was wishful thinking to imagine we were victims of ordinary horse thieves. In these bloody mountains, nothing was ordinary.

“We have no choice,” Jake said, placing the pack on his good shoulder. “We’ve got to walk and we have to walk soon.”

He walked over to me and kissed my forehead. The warmth of his lips on my skin gave me a boost of much needed strength.

He placed the rifle in my hands. That gave me strength, too.

We took off away from the cliff face, me with the rifle, him with his revolver and the infamous axe, and headed through the narrow path through the trees. It was obvious from the way the snow here was trodden up that we not only passed through here before but the monsters did too. If they did eat the horses, at least they didn’t do it at the camp. I had the terrible, terrible image of them leading Trouble back to a darkened wood where hundreds of the monsters sat on their haunches like gargoyles, waiting for their next meal.

“Jake,” I said after we’d been walking for a few hours. My legs were stiff and my feet were cold. The snow was lessening as we went down, but there was still enough to make things both difficult and pretty.

“Mhmm” he grunted, his voice strained. He was feeling it too.

“What if there are more?” I asked.

“More?” he repeated without turning around.

“More of them. What if there are too many? What if they discover River Bend and the rest of the country? What happens then?”

“I reckon we should worry about that once we’re done worrying about ourselves.”

I tugged on his jacket sleeve until he stopped and looked at me. He raised up the brim of his hat and I could see sweat gathered at his temples.

“But what if?”

He sighed and looked up at the trees. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d like to think they’ll stay here and die here.”

“But this is the only trail over to California. The wagons going westward, they have to go up to Oregon in order to reach the Pacific. More and more people will go through here and more and more people will…turn.”

“Turn?”

“Turn into them. Become addicted to human flesh, to the power it gives.”

He chewed on his lip. “You know, I’d kill someone for a cigar right now. Look, I hear what you are saying. But we can’t do anything about that at this moment. I promised to keep you safe just as you promised to keep yourself safe. If we happen across them, we’ll kill them best we can, even if they wave the white flag and surrender. But for now, we can only worry about each other.”

I nodded. I knew what he was saying, but that didn’t erase the fear. I didn’t think anything could. Every heavy step we took through the forest, surviving on snow water and the last of the raccoon meat, was a step of dread. I feared every shadow, every smell, every sound. We were on foot, and despite our weaponry, we were still at the mercy of God or luck or the mountain or something beyond our control.

We went onwards though, because to stop was to die. We trudged through the snow—step by step by step—and we lived in the constant anxiety that nothing was safe except for each other.

As the sky turned purple with dusk and cast a lilac glow on the snowy trail, we’d been walking for eight hours and I couldn’t go another step. Everything was painful, everything burned—my legs and feet felt foreign to me; I never knew they could hurt so much.

Jake, determined to reach the nearest cabin, picked me up and threw me over his bad shoulder. I wanted to protest, to fight it, to keep walking, but there was nothing I could do. I was all out of strength.

I put my faith in him and let him carry me, all while trying to keep conscious. My view was the wet-looking snow on the ground, and it was too awkward to raise my head and look at anything else so I concentrated on the sounds and smells. I expected to come across the putrid smell of
them
at any minute, rendering our escape futile, but it didn’t come. Instead, we found the cabin. We found shelter.

“This is a sight for sore eyes,” Jake said. I could hear the exhaustion in his voice, none made easier by carrying my frame.

We went inside and he gently lay me down beside the blackened fire pit. I sat up and looked around while he took off his pack and fumbled for matches. It was late afternoon and there was enough light coming in through the one working window door to illuminate things. It wasn’t as cold either, and I had hoped the snowbanks between the cabin and the outhouse had melted some.

At that thought, a pitter patter began to sound on the thin roof. Rain.

Jake cocked a tired eye to the ceiling. “Looks like the snow is over for now. We’re that much closer to River Bend.” That filled me with a dangerous spark of hope—we had a chance. Unfortunately it all hinged on whether we could make it through the night. I wanted to keep going, but I knew that neither of us had it in us.

He turned over the logs in the pit until he got a few that weren’t charred and started a fire. Soon the cabin was warm and toasty while the rain fell heavier, dripping through the roof in some places. There was something almost romantic about the scenario, like a scene from a romantic poem, but even though my heart and body yearned for Jake with a startling ferocity, the fear and exhaustion was too much.

My stomach growled noisily. I eyed Jake in embarrassment.

He smiled wearily. “I wish we had something more to eat. I’m famished too.” He looked to the window. “Not sure what I can scrounge up in this weather. I think most animals are taking shelter.”

“Don’t go,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.” The need to have him close to me outweighed my empty stomach.

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t think I can handle being alone,” I said. “I don’t think I can handle much of anything anymore.” Heat pricked behind my eyes, and before I knew it, tears were falling down my cheeks, salty on my lips. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried and yet I was suddenly doing so in front of Jake.

“Hey, now,” Jake said softly. He got up and sat beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. He gently brushed my tears away with his thumb and then kissed the wet trails they’d left behind. His lips were so warm and soft and made my heart flutter with gratitude and hope.

“Sorry,” I sniffled.

“You ain’t got nothing to be sorry about,” he said, kissing the corner of my mouth. He tucked my hair behind my ears. “You’ve been dealt a rotten hand in life, Eve. There’s plenty to cry about.”

“So have you,” I said.

“I have,” he said in a low voice, giving me a nod. “But that’s only more the reason why I wouldn’t leave your side. I need you too. I reckon that might seem silly to hear from a grown man, but the truth is that I need you very much. In this short time, you’ve given me purpose. To love you. To protect you.”

To love me?
I stared at him in shock. He loved me? How could that be?

He only smiled at my expression. “I think we all need a chance to cry sometimes, don’t you?”

My heart was still beating over the word
love
. “Have you cried?”

He nodded. “I’m done crying though. I reckon your pretty tears are enough for the both of us.” He unraveled the animal hides and spread them out on the ground. “Here, lie down and rest. I’ll keep an eye out. I’ll keep you safe.”

I don’t even think I got a chance to say thank you before I promptly fell asleep.

I
was back
at River Bend, sleeping in Uncle Pat’s hayloft. It was dark outside—dark as sin, and the sound of crickets filled the air.

I slowly got to my feet and breathed in the familiar smell of hay and wood and manure. It felt good to be back, as if I’d never gone anywhere, as if it had all been a realistic dream about blood, snow and a man.

Monsters.

I was about to head down the ladder when a strange sound caught my attention.

I walked to the edge of the hayloft and looked over the edge.

All the animals in the pens were gone. The house was completely black. My mother stood with her back to me in the middle of the paddock, muttering the same phrase over and over again.

She was speaking!

I tried to call after her but my throat froze, keeping my voice inside. Now I was the mute one.

I found my way through the dark, climbing down the ladder, and stealthily made my way towards my mother. I didn’t want to scare her, and yet something deep inside told me to approach with caution. Perhaps it was the strange, sour smell that was growing more pungent by the moment.

When I was close to her I finally began to make out what she was saying.

“You need to find it,” she whispered. “What’s out there.”

“You need to go. You need to find it. What’s out there.”

“What’s out there.”

“What’s out there.”

She kept repeating this over and over again in ragged little whispers.

Finally I found my voice.

“
What’s
out there?” I asked.

My mother stiffened and fell silent. The straps of her bonnet blew in the breeze. I stared at her back then down at her hands. They were paler than snow and dripping with blood.

“Mother?”

“You know what’s out there.”

I shook my head, wanting to reach out for her but being too afraid. That horrible aroma was growing stronger and there was something so terribly wrong about all of this.

I eyed the dark house. “Where is Uncle Pat?”

“They’re all gone.”

“Where did they go?”

“They were consumed.”

I nervously wrung my hands together. I’d lost all feeling in them. “They got consumption?” I asked carefully.

She shook her head. “No,” she said.

She turned around to face me. Her eyes were blue and blank, her skin pale grey. Blood was smeared around her mouth. “I consumed them.”

She smiled, and instead of having teeth, there was a row of gleaming eyeballs like bulging white grapes.

I woke up with a jerk and had to gasp for my breath. It was dusk, with only a faint, grainy light before me. I heard a faint dripping sound and Jake’s steady breathing, and had to take a few moments to bring myself back to the present.

It was a shame the present wasn’t much better than my dream had been.

I rolled onto my back, feeling the ache throughout my body and stared up at the ceiling. We could have only been sleeping for about an hour since there was a bit of natural light left. As scary as the dream was, I felt sleep pulling me back under, my body and mind aching for solitude. I could only hope that I would find it in a dreamless state.

I was in a half-asleep limbo when I smelled it. I couldn’t figure out whether the odor was in my dreams or in real life, but from the way my skin prickled with gooseflesh, the way the hairs stood up and my chest felt full of ice, I knew to trust my body. It knew the difference between the dangers that were real and the dangers that weren’t.

The danger was real.

I swallowed hard and gently nudged Jake. He awoke quickly but fell silent the moment he breathed in. He could smell it too.