Page 101 of Death Valley

“So, what do we do now?” I whisper.

He glances over my shoulder at the window. “We won’t make it anywhere before dark. Think we’ll be spending the night in.”

“Then they’ll be coming to us.”

He nods. “Yeah. I reckon they will. But we’ll be ready for them.”

29

AUBREY

Night falls over the cabin with malevolent swiftness, the temperature plummeting as darkness claims the valley. I stand at the window, peering through a narrow gap in the wooden boards Jensen nailed across the glass hours earlier. The moon hangs swollen and bright in the winter sky, casting an unnatural blue-white glow across the snow, turning the landscape into something alien and threatening.

“See anything?” Jensen asks, his voice low as he feeds another chair leg into our fire.

“Nothing yet,” I reply, though the knot in my stomach tightens with each passing moment. The forest surrounding the cabin stands unnaturally still, no wind to stir the snow-laden branches, no wildlife making their usual sounds. Just silence, heavy and expectant, like the world holding its breath before a storm breaks.

Before the monsters arrive.

We’ve spent the day preparing as best we could with our limited resources. Boarding the windows with broken shelving and the hacked-up table. Reinforcing the door with the small bed he dragged from the loft. Creating makeshift weapons fromwhatever we could find—a chair leg sharpened to a point, metal brackets pulled from shelves and bent into crude blades. Jensen found a reserve of kerosene for the lanterns, so we have fuel if need be.

Small comforts against what waits in the darkness.

“How’s Eli?” I ask, abandoning my post at the window to check on him.

“Not good,” Jensen admits, his face grim in the firelight as he adjusts the blanket covering Eli’s shivering form. “Fever’s getting worse. Just like it did with Red…”

I place my hand on Eli’s forehead, feeling the unnatural heat radiating from his skin. His breathing comes in shallow, uneven gasps, each one seeming harder than the last. The wound on his shoulder is horrid—the flesh around it darkening, strange veins spreading outward like ink through water.

“Not long now,” I whisper, the horror of it settling like ice in my veins.

Jensen meets my eyes, no evasion, no comfort. Just the truth.

The words falls between us, heavy with implication. Eli is becoming one of them—like Hank, like Red. Like Cole, if anything remains of him after the feeding frenzy we witnessed on the trail. The hunger is taking him, transforming him cell by cell into something no longer human. And not like Nathaniel McAlister, or apparently my sister, but a monster. A hungry animal.

“We should restrain him now,” I say. “Before he does.”

Will make it easier to kill him, I think but I don’t say it. I don’t need to. We’re both thinking it and when it comes to it, I’ll step up again and do it so Jensen doesn’t have to.

Jensen nods, already reaching for the climbing rope in his pack. We work silently, securing Eli’s wrists and ankles to the frame of the cot. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t even seem aware ofwhat we’re doing. His eyes, when they briefly flutter open, are glazed with fever, unfocused but already showing hints of that unnatural blue.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him as I tighten the final knot. “I’m so sorry, Eli.”

He mumbles something incoherent, head tossing restlessly against the thin pillow. I wonder if he’s dreaming, and what horrors fill those dreams as the hunger takes hold.

A soft scratching sound from the window freezes me in place. So faint it might be imagination—the brush of a pine branch against glass, perhaps, or just the cabin settling in the cold.

But then it comes again. Deliberate. Rhythmic.

Not random or natural.

“They’re here,” Jensen whispers, voice tight with tension.

Oh, god.

Jensen is already moving, rifle in one hand, the axe in the other, taking position beside the boarded window. I draw my gun as I sweep the small cabin, checking each point of vulnerability.

I join him at the window, peering through a different gap in the boards. At first, I see nothing but moonlit snow and the dark line of trees beyond. Then a shadow detaches itself from the forest’s edge, moving with that unnatural fluidity I’ve come to recognize.

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