Donners of the Dead

Chapter Ten

At first I wasn’t quite sure how it happened. When I opened my eyes in the grey light of dawn, I found myself inches from Jake’s chest. I sucked in my breath and slowly raised my head to see him peering down at me through his long lashes.

“Morning,” he whispered gruffly as he watched my eyes widen, a trace of a smile on his lips.

What the dickens was I doing, lying next to him like this?

Then it all came back to me. Visions of sleep and snow and the grainy reality of dreams.

A nightmare.

In it, I had been walking through the woods hand in hand with my father, snow falling softly around us. Unlike my other dreams, I wasn’t a younger girl but as old as I was now, and we were in these very mountains, not the safe world he’d been a part of. My father was ageless, with kind eyes that twinkled in the fading blue light. The world around us was silent and he kept repeating a word over and over again. I had no idea what it meant, until finally he stopped and held me close to him.

“It means strength, Evangeline,” he said softly. “You must draw strength from fear or fear will make you weak.”

“I don’t need strength,” I whispered back to him, holding onto his hand. “I have you.”

He pulled away and looked me up and down, his eyes flitting through a range of different colors—brown to hazel to red to grey. “There is no me. There are only monsters inside of angels and angels inside of monsters. Choose wisely.”

He stepped away from me and his face contorted with pain.

“Papa,” I cried out as his skin turned ashen and pale, his eyes glowing blue. A horrible, beautiful blue. I reached for him but immediately took my hand back when the smell of rotting meat took over.

He grinned at me like a savage wolf. “Which one am I?” he asked in a snarling voice, his words dripping with an animalistic quality, steaming saliva that came from his mouth and hit the snow with a hiss.

He was a monster inside of an angel.

I turned and ran, and like in all dreams, I ran fast enough to fly, and then slow, like I was slogging through oatmeal. Suddenly the cabin appeared in the woods, the hanging lamp by the door wide open and waiting.

I ran into the cabin, still smelling the monster that was my father, knowing he was right on my trail.

I yelled for help from Jake and Tim and stopped dead when I saw Avery lying motionless on the table. I ran for him, trying to speak his name, but the words wouldn’t come and his eyes wouldn’t open.

Then the door behind me slammed shut. Everything went black.

Except for two blue glowing eyes, right where Avery should have been.

Claws dug into my back, ripping me apart like my spine was a seam.

I woke up with a start, covered in sweat and breathing hard. My back ached as if the claws had been real. I couldn’t figure out if I’d been screaming or not, but Tim was sitting by the door, asleep with his head against it. I remembered getting up and looking at Jake as he lay there, deep in sleep. Fear was motivating me and this was how I was drawing strength from it. I lay down beside him, feeling more afraid than proud, and promptly fell asleep.

Now that it was morning and I was right up against him, the fear was gone and the embarrassment came flooding in. I had behaved like a little girl who had a bad dream.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered quickly. I knew my face was growing red despite the chill in the air.

As I made the move to get up he said, “No.” He licked his lips. “Stay. It’s still early.”

I paused, wondering why he’d want me to stay by his side. Could he have actually liked the fact that I slept beside him as a wife would do with her husband? I suddenly felt very young.

I got up anyway and looked around the cabin. Dawn was just breaking somewhere beyond the trees, ushering in just enough pastel light. Tim was stoking the fire, and from what I could tell, Isaac was still asleep.

“Did you have a bad scare?” Jake asked.

I turned to see him trying to sit up. I went to him and grabbed his arm. “Lie back down,” I said.

“I’m fine.” He grunted and eyed my hand on his arm. “But I don’t mind you holding onto me.”

“Jake,” Tim said as he came toward us with a steaming cup of water. He held it out for him, his eyes passing briefly over me. “I scrounged up the last of the coffee kernels. You think you’ll be all right enough to make it back home today?”

Jake nodded and took the cup. Before he had a sip he gestured to it as if to offer me some. I shook my head politely.

“I reckon I should be okay. I also reckon we wouldn’t have a choice even if I wasn’t. Hank is apt to come back at any time.” He looked to sleeping Isaac as he said that. “We’re just lucky nothing happened to us last night. We can’t trust a madman.”

“I was up and ready for it if that were the case,” Tim said.

I nearly smiled, knowing Tim had been asleep when I woke up from my dream. His eyes darted to me for a moment but I kept my mouth shut. He may have held a gun to my head the other day, but I wasn’t about to rat him out. Not now. It seemed like everything was so unimportant when we were surrounded by death and snow. Angels and monsters.

And yet I still held onto Jake’s arm, my fingers burning into his bare skin. Somehow that seemed important.

I let go and pressed my hands together. I looked expectantly at Tim. “Should I start packing our stuff up?”

He shook his head. “Not with your shoulder. You did enough for us yesterday. Thank you.” He cleared his throat and ran his hand through his thin hair. “You both just take care of yourselves. Isaac, when the crazy bastard gets up, he and I will pack everything up. Then we’re out of here.”

“I can’t let you do everything,” Jake said with annoyance, his dark brows knit together. “I’m not crippled. It’s just a damn bullet wound.”

Tim shot him a placating smile. “You can go out and get us dinner. We’re fresh out of food anyway.”

Having slept in my clothes, I made my way over to the pot of water that had been warmed by the fire and quickly washed my face and ran a twig brush over my teeth, all while keeping my eyes focused on Isaac. Though he himself hadn’t acquired a taste for flesh, he had been the Dr. Frankenstein to Hank’s monster, a story I had read a few years ago. But while that monster seemed to be misunderstood, Hank had been a monster to begin with, and Isaac had seemed hellbent on making him worse. From what we’d all seen, he’d succeeded.

When Isaac began to stir, I quickly turned and left the area, not sure if I could even look into his eyes after what he’d done to Donna. An immoral part of me wished Hank had eaten him.

I caught Jake just as he came back into the cabin from the outhouse.

“Grab your shawl,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” was his answer. He picked up his rifle and headed back out into the snow.

I sighed though I was happy to leave the cabin. I quickly wrapped my heavy shawl around me and slipped on my boots, heading out into the frozen air.

It was a fair morning—the sun was just starting to slice through the trees like golden glass and the sky was a cool blue peppered by dark clouds. It was the kind of weather I knew would change, that any moment a storm could come rolling down the white peaks and across the frozen lake. I had to hope we’d already be on our way.

“Where are we going?” I asked Jake, trotting after him, the air sticking needles in my lungs.

“You heard the man,” Jake yelled back. “We’re getting dinner. We’ll need something to eat when we leave this place.”

I gripped my shawl tighter beneath my chin. “This isn’t exactly safe,” I said as we disappeared further into the trees following what looked like a deer path. I kept expecting to see Hank at every turn.

Or Avery.

Or my father.

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.

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.