The Hunger

by Alma Katsu

  When Keseberg lifted his foot to give Thomas another kick, Elitha lunged. She threw herself at him, knocking him backward and pinning him in the snow. He thrashed, trying to unseat her.

  “Get off me, you stupid bitch.” He shoved her to the ground. Snow slid down her skirts and beneath her collar. The cold made her gasp. She was tired. Tired of fighting him.

  “Leave us alone, just leave us alone,” she shouted. Keseberg came for her again and she closed her eyes, waiting for his fist. A strong hand grabbed her and hauled her up from the snow.

  “Come on.” It was Thomas. Turning, dizzy, she saw Keseberg hanging back, doubled over as though looking for patterns in the ice. She and Thomas plunged through the snow, floundering, struggling to their feet each time. Thomas looked over his shoulder at her. His face was flushed and his breath ragged, pulling her so strongly that her shoulder burned.

  “Run, run,” he kept saying. But why, she wanted to ask him. They were way out in front of Keseberg, halfway to the cabins. They didn’t have to run anymore.

  Then she saw what was in his other hand: a small knife, no bigger than what you’d use at the dinner table. A fine, thin line of blood clung to the edge, and a line of blood was visible on the snow behind them, like a fine skein of red thread. Keseberg wasn’t following them. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t let them get away if he could help it.

  Thomas, Thomas, she thought. What have you done?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Mary Graves watched that next morning as Mary Murphy escaped from her family’s cabin with the Eddys’ baby in her arms. Eddy and William Foster followed her tracks in the snow, but by the time they caught up to her, the teenage girl had already killed the baby and was devouring her liver. Eddy shot the girl where she stood, Foster unable to do anything to stop him.

  After Mary Murphy came Eleanor Graves, Mary’s own sister, who had taken to dancing barefoot in the knee-deep snow, her toes going blue and frostbitten. When her mother tried to force her into the tent, she screamed and pulled away, bolting for the woods, her long dark hair streaming wildly behind her like a wave good-bye.

  “We’re going to leave. We’re going to make a run for it,” Stanton promised Mary. He had sharpened his hunting knife and was cutting an old deer hide into strips. “We’re going to make snowshoes. It’ll be easier to get through the snow. I saw a pair in my grandfather’s house . . . I never used them but I think I remember how they were made.”

  “We’re going with you. I think we’re strong enough not to slow you down,” Sarah Fosdick, Mary’s sister, said when she saw what they were doing. She sat next to Mary and began stringing strips of hide to wooden frames they’d made from the staves of empty flour barrels.

  They sat together through the afternoon working on the snowshoes. Miserly slivers of sunlight fell through the cracks in the walls to illuminate their work. There were little children underfoot everywhere in the cabin since the adults were afraid to let them outdoors. Mary glanced guiltily at the children, knowing she would be leaving soon but they would not.

  We’ll send help as soon as we’re able.

  Sarah was sitting next to her on the floor, humming while she laced deer hide strips to a frame, but when they heard the shot, she stiffened and looked at Mary. She asked, “What could that be?”

  The few remaining cows started lowing, panicked.

  Stanton was the first one out the door. Franklin Graves and Jay Fosdick snatched up their rifles and were right behind him.

  There was a second gunshot and a tangle of raised voices. Then a volley of shots, sounding like thunder.

  The waiting was unbearable. Mary’s mother, Elizabeth, knew what it meant when Mary got restless. “Don’t go out there,” she warned. “Mr. Stanton can take care of himself.”

  There was another volley of shots, a few sharp cries. Mary could wait no longer. She leapt to her feet and ran outside.

  There was yelling down by the lake, coming from behind a curtain of pines and boulders. Mary started to run in the direction of the voices, slipping in the choppy snow.

  Finally, she found Stanton. He had an arm around Thomas, the Indian boy. He’d been wounded—shot; his right shoulder was pinched high and he had a hand pressed to his ribs. Blood showed through his jacket, a dark spreading patch. “What happened? Will he be all right?” she asked, running up to them.

  She saw her answer in Stanton’s expression. “Tell Mrs. Reed to boil some water and make bandages.” Margaret Reed wouldn’t lift a finger to help, Mary knew that. The woman hated Indians as much as her husband. She caught herself wishing Tamsen were here; Thomas would stand a better chance with her.

  Amanda McCutcheon agreed to tend to Thomas. Elitha Donner had joined them by now, pale with fright. She obviously loved the boy. Amanda had Thomas strip off his clothes from the waist up, then sit on a stool. She sluiced water over the opened flesh, careful not to touch the wound herself. The cuts went deep, gaping so wide that Mary thought she could see to the rib bones. She forced herself to watch everything Amanda did, knowing it could come in handy. Any one of them could be the next to die, especially the ones nursing the sick.

  “Hold this,” Amanda said, guiding Elitha’s hand to clamp the end of a bandage against Thomas’s side while she wound the rest around his torso.

  People were talking outside the shelter, too low to hear. Mary left Thomas to dress and tiptoed to the entrance.

  “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 onl
y 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.

  Elitha was crying wildly now. She pointed at Keseberg. “He put you up to this, didn’t he? Whatever he told you is a lie. He’s doing this to get back at me and Thomas, because we wouldn’t do what he said.” They weren’t even listening, Mary saw. They didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, and Keseberg only smiled at her, looking pleased.

  Dolan pulled back the hammer.

  Elitha’s scream and the shot rang through the trees at the same time. Thomas remained on his feet for one weightless second—Mary’s hope buoyed—maybe Dolan had missed.

  Then Thomas toppled backward into the snow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Springfield, Illinois

  July 1840

  Reiner had not changed much in fifteen years, Lewis Keseberg thought. His uncle’s hair was a little whiter and the skin on his face a little more ragged but otherwise much the same as when Lewis had last seen him, as a boy in Germany. Reiner had the same easy smile, the same wildness twinkling in his eyes. Both made something in Lewis’s gut turn over. He’d been content to hope Reiner had died, and seeing him again at his doorstep this evening had spooked Lewis more than he could say. You couldn’t trust his uncle’s smiles, and, he knew, those eyes held sickening secrets.

  Reiner had just appeared on Lewis’s doorstep with no forewarning. Not that Reiner was ever one to write letters, but it was unnerving, still; Lewis had only started renting this homestead a few months ago. How had Reiner been able to track him down?

  Lewis brought out a bottle of a neighbor’s home-brewed whiskey, potent stuff, and two tin cups. “Warum bist du hier?”—why are you here?—he asked in rusty German, eyeing his uncle as he set the cups down on his splintered old table.

  That easy grin. “The family curse,” he laughed as he sat in one of Keseberg’s chairs and gulped down his liquor.

  So. His uncle had fled the homeland. “What’d they get you for?”

  “The usual. Not that they could prove anything. A man goes missing but there’s no body to be found—who’s to say it’s murder?” His uncle huffed out another laugh, then leaned back in his chair and squinted into the corners of the cabin, hidden in shadow. “Where’s your father gone off to?”

  “He’s in jail. Back in Indiana.”

  Reiner raised an eyebrow. “You left him to rot in jail alone?”

  Keseberg’s cheeks went hot. “I’m making a fresh start.”

  His uncle’s stare fell heavily on him but Lewis didn’t dare meet his eyes. He remembered Reiner’s wrath from his childhood; it was epic and unpredictable. A thrashing for spilling a teaspoon’s worth of salt on the floor, a tooth knocked clear out of his mouth for rolling his eyes at something Reiner had said.

  But Reiner simply laughed again. “No fresh starts for men like us. What you are, it’s in your blood. You can never deny it.”

  Lewis looked around his cabin. The gathering dusk hid its shabby nature. It was a simple cabin, one room with a sleeping loft. This table and the two chairs were about all the furniture he owned. “Not much room here for guests, Uncle,” he started to say.

  Reiner poured himself another drink. “It will only be for a few weeks. I’m headed west for a spell. Heard about a prospecting gig out in the mountains.”

  “California?”

  His uncle nodded. “I hear it’s lawless out there. Men like us can roam free, if you know what I mean. No one watching.”

  Heading out to make a fortune in gold. The idea flared up in Lewis’s mind like a mirage. To leave behind the daily grind of farming, plowing fields, watering and weeding. It was hard to carve out a living for yourself when you had nothing, came from nothing.

  But—no. Lewis had plans. He’d get himself a wife, work hard, fit in. He had never known happiness as a child—his father had been abysmal as a parent and his mother disappeared before he’d formed any memories of her—but he’d vowed not to make the same mistakes as his father and uncle and the rest of his family. He’d resolved to be different. He would not be a failure. He would break the family curse.

  If he could just hold on and get through these tough times, it would get easier. It had to.

  The older man reached into his pocket before dropping a handful of wadded currency onto the table. “I can pay my way. I’m not asking for a handout.”

  Keseberg’s eyes widened at the sight of the money, more than he’d made in an entire year. “Where did you get this?”

  Reiner poured a generous amount of whiskey into his cup. “I’ve been selling patent medicines. My own recipes from the old country. I’ve been doing well.”

  “So I see . . . But if the medicines are selling so well, why go all that way to California?”

  That was when Keseberg knew his uncle was lying. The older man stretched back in his chair. He fixed his nephew with a stare, watching intently for his reaction. “I got a sickness no tonic can fix. Gold fever, I think they call it.” He winked.

  Lewis felt ill. More like blood fever, he thought.

  It wasn’t until that evening, as Keseberg made up a spot on the floor for his uncle to
sleep—Lewis didn’t invite his uncle to share the loft, couldn’t quite bear the thought of lying next to him through the long night—that Reiner made the offer.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” The older man had just peeled off his filthy jacket to ready himself for bed and stood before his nephew in his stained shirt. He fixed those wolf-bright eyes on him. “What’s keeping you here, anyway? This lousy farm? Because it looks like another in that string of failures of yours, son.”

  “Don’t call me son,” he said, stung. “This is what I want to do. This is my choice.”

  His uncle shrugged. “Suit yourself, but you’re making a mistake, my boy. There’s a reason why we Kesebergs are always on the move. If you stay in one place, they will catch onto you.”

  The family curse.

  It’s not going to get me. Not that he could say this to his uncle; it would be like waving a red flag before a bull. “I’ll be careful.”

  But the older man wouldn’t give up. “I worry about you. You haven’t spent enough time with the Keseberg men, your father away in jail, you living in the new world with no uncles, no grandfathers. You don’t know what it will be like, how the feeling comes on you so strong that you can’t say no to it. When it does, how will you take care of yourself?”

  For an instant, Lewis Keseberg was eleven years old again and standing next to his father in the smokehouse. A huge carcass hung from a meat hook, swaying gently. He could still hear the drip, drip, drip of blood hitting the muddy puddle under the body, still smell the iron tang in the air. The shape of the carcass not like an animal at all, but like a human.

  The surge of something like desire that moved through him so powerfully he swayed, too.