The Hunger

by Alma Katsu

  Tamsen threw her cloak over her shoulders and picked her way out of the crowded tent. She listened for the crunch of boots on snow, but instead she heard something else: whispers. No matter how hard she strained she couldn’t make out what was being said.

  Something was out there. If you’d asked her a month ago she’d have said it was wolves, but now she was filled with a worse kind of dread. Once again the visions she’d had in the basin came back to her: the shadow figures with their strange appearance, like something long-dead come back to life; the sickening smell of the one that had caught fire. Pushing through the fear was a current of anger. She’d let everyone dissuade her of what she’d believed to be true. Kept her head down while they mocked and isolated her.

  But she’d been right, and she knew it now—could feel it.

  No, could feel them.

  They had followed her here. Had been, possibly, tracking their party all this time.

  Her mind raced. Should she awaken the others and demand their help? Would they even listen? If they once again ridiculed her, the danger might only get worse. There wasn’t much time. The creatures moved fast.

  She shuddered, turning toward the mouth of the tent to try to find a rifle, remembering again the way their faces writhed in the fire.

  Fire. They had been terrified of the fire in the desert. They had scattered after the broken lantern set the dry plain aflame.

  Tamsen paused, listening again. There they were—the distant, hungry whispers, moving through the branches of the trees as drifts of snow blew to the ground.

  She couldn’t be imagining it, could she?

  She thought again about rousing the hired men to help, but they were slow to get out of bed and she would not let a second pass while the creatures could be closing in on her family. She would not allow these men to stop her from doing what was right.

  Not this time.

  Fire. She had to build a fire, now. She focused her mind on that.

  Carrying wood slick with frost in her arms, Tamsen made her way through the snow as far as she dared go toward the woods. Her boots filled with frigid slush. Her hem cracked with ice. Her fingers turned numb, bloated from the cold.

  She cleared a spot on the wet ground and stacked the wood as quickly as she could, occasionally stopping to look over her shoulders. Crouching, she thought she saw eyes glittering in the dusk, glittering with the reflected light.

  “Go away,” she said out loud, her voice thin in the cold.

  From the old flames, she set a twig alight and carried it to the newly built campfire. Carefully, she lit the tinder at the base. The tinder caught but just barely, sending up a smoky plume. She would build a third one, too. The others would say it was a waste of good logs, but she knew better.

  As she was working, Solomon and William, Betsy’s teenaged boys by her previous husband, crept out from the tent, shoulders hunched against the cold. “What are you doing, Aunt Tamsen?” Solomon asked.

  She straightened up. On the air, their breath seized and turned white. “There’s something in the woods—can you hear it, boys?”

  “Wild animals?” William asked. He was the younger of the two and was always looking for adventure.

  Tamsen hesitated for a second, then nodded.

  “We should hunt for it. Father says we could use some wild game.”

  “These animals . . . aren’t the kind for eating. And though you’re a very brave boy, William, you shouldn’t go out hunting after dark.” She had to clench a jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. “Will you help me build some more campfires, though, to keep it away?”

  The brothers looked puzzled. But they were good boys and helped her in the end. They built three new fires, making four in total. By this time, the oxen had started lowing, but it was too dark to go searching for them and make sure they were okay. Tamsen’s heart felt as if it might splinter in her throat, as if it might shatter like ice and cut her open from the inside out. She remembered how Elitha had screamed when the man got a blackened arm around her. How he’d sniffed at her neck. The cadaverous look of his face and the wet, pulsating motion of his nostrils.

  As if he’d found them by smell.

  They were still out there. She could hear them. The wood was wet. It wouldn’t light fast enough. Why hadn’t she thought to bring out her rifle anyway? Maybe the noise would have at least scared them off. Would four fires be enough? No. They must build more. As many as they could. In a circle, all around the tents . . .

  A hand came down on her arm and she nearly screamed.

  But it was just Jacob. He had given his heavy coat to George, piled it on top of his brother’s blankets, though it did nothing to stop the shivering. Now he wore only a filthy shirt. The cold had turned his nose red already.

  “What are you doing?” He shook his head, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “It’s as bright as daylight out here. Go on,” he said, to Solomon and William. “Go get some sleep.”

  She saw that the boys were pale with cold and exhaustion. She had lost track of how long they’d been outside.

  “There’s something out there,” she said, once they were alone. “Something watching us. You can hear it.”

  They both stood still, listening. Sure enough, within minutes, a murmuring rose above the lowing of the oxen.

  “Do you hear it?” she whispered.

  When Jacob nodded, she nearly wept. She had almost begun to wonder whether she was going crazy.

  “It sounds human,” Jacob whispered. “Perhaps some of the others, looking for us?”

  Tamsen shook her head. “No.”

  They stood together in silence, and after a minute they saw dark figures moving between the trees, caught behind the haze of smoke from the fires. They appeared and then vanished, then reappeared again. Circling, pacing, stalking.

  “There,” she whispered.

  Jacob was quiet. “Those are mere shadows cast by the flames, Tamsen,” he said gently. “And the whispers—it could just be the wind. Or our minds playing tricks on us.” But she heard the tremor of doubt in his voice, saw the way he shivered, listening hard.

  “Maybe. Or maybe something’s been following us. Ever since the basin,” she said, emphasizing the last word only slightly.

  Jacob turned to her. “Tamsen,” he said quietly, placing his big hands on her shoulders. He looked into her eyes. “What is this really about?”

  She wanted to cry, or scream, or tear at her brother-in-law’s face. How dare he keep questioning her?

  “We’re isolated from the rest of the party,” she reminded him, “and I bet they—the creatures, the monsters—they know we have an injured man in the tent.” She paused, even as the truth she’d already known sank in deeper, thudding into her gut. Her voice dropped to a hard whisper. “We’re going to die. After everything—after everything. We made it this far. And now they’re going to get us.” She was shaking so hard she thought she’d fall.

  “There’s no such thing as monsters.” But Jacob lifted his rifle to his shoulder. His eyes watered from the dense wood smoke, but he didn’t falter. “Go wake the men. We’re going to bring the oxen in, to be on the safe side.” So some part of him did believe her. “Tell them to bring their rifles.”

  “The oxen aren’t worth dying over, Jacob. Let them have the cattle.” Maybe they’ll be satisfied, she nearly added, but then stopped herself.

  “With no oxen, we can’t get the wagons out of here even when the snow recedes.” Jacob didn’t look at her. He didn’t take his eyes off the figures moving behind the scrim of smoke. He had to see them, too. See how their forms moved with an animal hunger. Shadows didn’t move that way. “If we lose the oxen, we’ll be trapped.”

  She knew she didn’t have to remind him.

  They already were trapped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mary gazed around her at the
snow-covered cabin and the makeshift lean-tos nearby, which stood like crumbling sugar cubes, and thought how quaint they looked, almost inviting, if one didn’t know better. Instead they were a kind of purgatory.

  It was William Eddy who’d spotted the abandoned cabin first, nearly a week ago now, and it had indeed seemed like a vision under the pine trees: a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, undoubtedly built by an earlier family of settlers that had tried to make its way through the mountain wilderness.

  The first flakes of snow were already falling by then. The children, tired as they were, ran around trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

  Except for the Donners, the wagon party had maneuvered successfully into the hollow, past the inky black lake scattered everywhere with boulders. The place was dark and still as a mausoleum.

  “We rest here for the night,” Patrick Breen had said then, though that had been days ago. They had left the Donners behind, and already Patrick Breen had taken on the role of captain.

  The Eddys had dragged their meager possessions into Breen’s dwelling, but Breen had pushed them out. “I got more children; we should get the roof,” he’d argued.

  Meanwhile, the Murphys had claimed a second cabin. Its roof had fallen in and weather had beaten its walls to a state of collapse, but they propped it up as best they could to keep the weather out. It shared no clean line of sight to the Breens, which was fitting; a feud had broken out between the two families and they hadn’t spoken a word to each other in a week.

  The rest had found shelter where they could. The Graveses had joined the Eddys in a tent pitched under a large pine and invited Margaret Reed and her little ones to join them. As for Charles Stanton, he kept to himself in a tiny tent on the outskirts of the area, with a view of the lake’s dark surface.

  They sheltered their fires from the snow as much as possible, building them up near the cabin and the lean-to, then gathered to try to warm their hands. And since then, the snow had just kept on coming. Everyone was growing restless, and worried.

  Mary still felt the burden of Charles Stanton’s confession on her own heart, too. She believed, powerfully, that she was in love with him, but this place seemed inhospitable to love, and she almost couldn’t bear the idea of telling him now. There would be another chance, later, she told herself. When they got to California. At least when the pass cleared and they made it over these peaks to the next ranch. It wasn’t that far. And love was like forgiveness—deep and patient. It would be waiting for her on the other side.

  * * *

  • • •

  “WE’LL TRY TO FIND a pass through the mountains tomorrow,” Breen said now as they gathered around the fire. But he’d been saying the same thing night after night, and if this storm didn’t blow through soon, Mary didn’t know what they would do. Breen nodded in the direction of mountain peaks they’d been able to see just days ago, but which were now invisible. Mary thought he was delusional; the snow was coming down faster and heavier than she’d ever seen in Illinois. “Everyone try to get some sleep tonight.”

  But in the morning, they found that one of the oxen had gone mad. At first, Mary thought its pained moaning was just the echo of snow dissolving into the lake.

  The animals lowed like this every morning, bellowing their hunger, asking for grain that would never come. They were penned in a haphazard circle of the remaining wagons and had stripped all the grass to be found under the snow. Now, they had nothing left to eat. They bumped restlessly against the wagons, hoping for escape.

  But then she saw it: There were gouges—open wounds—in the side of one of the beasts, as though it had been attacked by wolves in the night, yet somehow managed to live. Its eyes were bloodshot and a line of foam coated its lower lip. It lolled its big head menacingly as the men approached it, snorting and pawing the ground.

  “Waste not, want not,” William Eddy said, and promptly shot it between the eyes.

  “Damn it, Eddy,” Patrick Breen cursed. “That was my cow.”

  The other cattle grumbled and shuffled away. Eleanor Eddy whimpered.

  They harvested the meat and built up big fires, but Mary was one of many who hung back. She’d seen the way the beast’s eyes rolled in its sockets, heard its deranged bellowing. She knew stories of dogs and raccoons that could infect humans through a bite. True, she’d never heard of a cow getting sick that way, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. They still had rations enough; she refused to touch the animal’s flesh.

  But many others—too many—were hungry. And the smell of the roasting beef that night drew them out, willing to set aside their caution for a taste of fresh meat.

  There were no stories around the campfire, no laughter or songs or shared bottles of whiskey like in the early days on the trail. They’d run dry of all of that long ago. Now it was just the sound of ravenous eating, the smack of lips and teeth tearing flesh off bone.

  All around them, the snow came so fast it blurred the world behind a veil, and swallowed the sound of the babies wailing in the cold.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Dawn broke pale gray and carried the taste of ash.

  The sky was thick with clouds. Snow fell lightly; the storm wasn’t over yet. Sometime in the past hour, the accumulation had put out the bonfires. Thick black tails of smoke now lifted into the sky.

  Stanton stamped feeling back into his feet and met the other men around the embers of the last fire, hoping the warmth would drive the numbness from his chest. Rumors reached him quickly; one of Patrick Breen’s boys, his namesake, had gone missing in the night. Patrick, his friend Dolan, and his oldest son, John, had set out to look for the younger Patrick at daybreak.

  But midmorning, Patrick Breen and the other scouts returned. They had not found any trace of the boy, nothing but a slick of blood in the woods that seeped through the fresh snowfall.

  Meanwhile, William Graves hadn’t woken since last night’s feast. “His forehead’s hot to the touch,” Elizabeth Graves, his mother, said through tightened lips. James Smith, a teamster who’d also partaken of the meal, sweated like he was in the tropics.

  Thirteen-year-old Virginia Reed had run off, too, and no one could account for when she’d gone. They feared the worst.

  And then there was teenaged Eleanor Graves: She took to dancing in the snow, claiming she was a fairy princess. Pink-cheeked, delirium in her eyes.

  Stanton stood with others in the choppy snow outside the Graveses’ shelter, eyes downcast, no one knowing what to say to Franklin and Elizabeth, their family seemingly disproportionately afflicted, and so quickly. Inside the lean-to, Margaret Reed cried into Amanda McCutcheon’s arms for the loss of Virginia.

  “It doesn’t make sense. How could William and Eleanor get ill so fast?” Elizabeth Graves murmured, her face blank with grief. “They were fine yesterday morning. Just fine.”

  “What we’ve been through . . . it was bound to take its toll sooner or later,” Eliza Williams, the Reeds’ servant, said. She sat huddled on a stump next to her brother, Baylis.

  “It’s just like when Luke Halloran got so bad so fast, don’t you remember?” Lavinah Murphy stood bundled with a shawl over her coat. She looked from face to face as though trying to convince them. “His fever spiked so high and he acted funny, like he had a brain fever.”

  A wail broke from Elizabeth Graves’s throat. “You mean my William and Eleanor got the consumption?”

  “No—consumption don’t come on real fast like that,” Eliza Williams said, shaking her head. “I tended to some consumptives over in Taylorsville. It builds up in a person. It isn’t like that at all.”

  Stanton thought of Halloran those last few days, his fevered glittering eyes, the nonsense he spouted when anyone pressed him, how he’d attacked Tamsen. He’d never known a consumptive but thought of an epidemic he’d witnessed as a boy in Massachusetts, smallpox breaking out all over tow
n as though it had been carried on the wind. The children died first, it seemed, the young and the old and the very weak.

  It made sense now. This madness might be contagious, something a body could carry with it, hidden inside. It might take very little to pass along the disease.

  Stanton hated to be the one to break this bad news to them. Not only bad news, but the worst possible news under the circumstances. Reluctantly, he stepped into the center of the circle, coughing to get everyone’s attention. “I think we have to look to what all the people who got sick have in common. And that’s that they ate some of the meat last night.”

  Talking ceased. They looked at each other, brows lifting in realization as they tried to remember which of them had partaken. Faces paled in recall.

  “That’s right,” Elizabeth Graves said, a hand rising to her mouth in alarm. “Both my William and Eleanor had some of that beef. The teamster, too. I saw him.”

  “Does that mean we’re all going to get sick?” Baylis asked, his voice rising.

  “Maybe. Don’t panic, now,” Stanton said, spreading his hands for their attention. “Let’s see what happens. Maybe there’s a reason only some of us took ill. Maybe it won’t affect everyone.”

  Mary Graves looked to Stanton, her gray eyes clouded with worry, and he knew why. Her parents had pressed all her siblings to eat last night, to partake of the rich red meat while they could; it might be their last chance for fresh food in a while. They’d given all of the family’s share to the children. Stanton had skipped it because Mary had shared her concerns with him. Thank God he’d listened to her.

  “Are you saying that cow was diseased?” Lavinah Murphy asked, paling. Her entire family had been at the feast. “It looked perfectly fine—before it was attacked.”

  Those gruesome wounds. Stanton turned to her. “Maybe that’s it—maybe it was the attack. Maybe whatever attacked that cow was diseased—”

  “A wolf, it had to be a wolf,” Baylis Williams broke in, saying what they were all thinking. “What else could it be?”