Page 1 of Death Valley

PROLOGUE

WINTER, 1847

Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

The baby came during the worst of the storm.

Nora McAlister crouched beside her aunt Amelia in the cramped lean-to, watching her aunt’s breath steam in the frigid air. The roof creaked under the weight of snow, the wind whistling through the cracks. No matter how hard Uncle Thomas tried to patch up the weak spots in the shack, the cold always got in. It was like a ravenous monster itself, finding every weakness in the lean-to, of which there were many.

Now Thomas was gone, as was little Nathaniel, lost days earlier to a fate that Nora didn’t let her thirteen-year old mind think about. She couldn’t, not even for a second. She had to keep concentrating on Amelia and the baby, she had to do all she could to make sure both of them survived.

And Nora was good at that. For the last few months, all they had been doing is surviving, ever since the Donner Party got stuck at Truckee Lake. The year prior, Nora lost both her parents to tuberculosis and her father’s brother, Thomas, took her onjust before they started their journey from Missouri, joining the 500 wagons en route to a better future in California. Tragedy and calamity struck again and again on the grueling journey, until it came to a head when they got snowed in at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

People began to starve. People began to die.

People started to do the unthinkable.

It was enough that Thomas, a deeply God-fearing man, broke away from the group and sought refuge for Nora and his family, finding it in a dilapidated cabin built by previous emigrants, located half a day’s walk from the camp at Truckee Lake, further up in the mountains beneath the pass. He had hoped the distance would keep his family safe from the horror that was slowly ravaging the groups.

He was wrong.

“You’re going to be okay,” Nora said to her aunt, though her voice shook from both the cold and the fear that made a permanent nest in her bones.

The lantern’s flame cast grotesque shadows across Amelia’s face, deepening the hollows of her cheeks, the dark pits of her eyes. Months of starvation had pulled her skin tight across her bones, but her belly remained swollen, distended. Unnatural. Something about the way it moved beneath the blanket made Nora’s skin crawl.

“You just need to push,” Nora whispered through her cracked lips. Her hands shook as she positioned the threadbare blanket. “Almost there, Aunt Amelia.”

But the lie tasted bitter. Nora didn’t know anything about birthing babies, but they’d been at this for hours, and something was wrong.

So wrong.

Amelia’s skin was cold to the touch, too cold for someone in labor. Her eyes had taken on a strange sheen, and the veinsbeneath her skin showed black against flesh that was growing paler by the hour. When she screamed, the sound was wrong—guttural, hungry. Like the sounds Uncle Thomas had made yesterday, when he’d torn into?—

Nora pushed the memory away.

Blood pooled between Amelia’s legs, black in the dim light of the fire. Too much blood. The metallic scent of it filled the air, and Nora watched in horror as Amelia’s tongue darted out, as if tasting the air before running across dried white lips. Something shifted behind her eyes and Nora swore they were taking on a milky cast, a pale glacial blue.

It’s the light, Nora told herself.It has to be a trick of the light.

“Hungry,” Amelia moaned. Her fingers clawed at the blanket. “So hungry, Nora. The meat?—”

“No,” Nora said sharply. “Don’t think about that. Think about the baby. Your baby. Little Joseph or maybe little Josephine.”

But Amelia’s face had changed. The tendons in her neck stood out like cords, and her jaw worked mechanically, as if chewing something. Her teeth…had they always been that sharp? Did she have extra teeth now? A fresh wave of terror washed over Nora as she remembered how Uncle Thomas’s mouth had looked just before he?—

Another contraction seized Amelia. Her back arched unnaturally, spine cracking as it bent. The sound of tearing flesh filled the lean-to as her belly rippled. Something was coming, but Nora wasn’t sure it was just the baby.

She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“I see the head,” Nora said through a gasp. She had to keep things normal. “One more push, Aunt Amelia. Just one more?—”

Amelia’s head snapped toward her, neck extending—long, too long. Black fluid leaked from the corners of her mouth.When she spoke, her voice was a rasp of bone on bone. “Flesh of my flesh,” she crooned. “Blood of my blood.”

At that, she gave one final push and the baby slid into Nora’s waiting hands, impossibly small and perfect. A girl. For one blessed moment, hope bloomed in Nora’s chest. The infant was warm—so warm compared to her mother’s corpse-cold skin. Pink and alive and untouched by whatever had taken hold of their family.

Then Amelia’s spine cracked again. The sound of ripping flesh filled the lean-to as her jaw distended, unfolding like a snake’s. Where her eyes had been clouded moments ago, they now burned with feral intensity. Her fingers elongated into claws, skin splitting at the joints. Black blood dripped from the fresh wounds.

“Give her to me.” The words emerged as a hiss, nothing left of Amelia’s gentle voice. “My baby. My flesh. So tender, so fresh?—”

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