Page 2 of Death Valley

Nora stumbled backward, clutching the newborn to her chest. The infant let out a thin cry, and Amelia snapped her jaws at the sound. Something crackled beneath her aunt’s skin—bones shifting, reforming. The transformation that had taken Thomas and Nathaniel days was happening in minutes.

“No,” Nora choked. “Not you too.” The words came out as a whimper.

She knew now that Amelia was no longer, that this creature was in her place.

And there was nothing for Nora to do…

But run.

The storm hit her like a physical blow as she burst from the lean-to, her boots sinking deep into the snow. Wind-driven flakes scoured her face, but the cold was nothing compared to the terror clawing at her throat. Behind her, Amelia’s shriek split the night—no longer human, not even animal.

The sound of something that should not exist.

The unholiest of all that is unholy.

The baby squirmed against her chest. Nora tucked the infant deeper into her coat, praying the thin material would be enough. They’d eaten their leather coats weeks ago, when the hunger first began. Before they’d turned to worse things.

A shadow detached from the darkness—Uncle Thomas. The storm had frozen his clothes solid, the fabric crackling as he moved. His face was a ruin of frost and old blood, teeth gleaming wetly in the faint light coming from the cabin. Behind him, little Nathaniel peered around a pine. Her cousin’s cherubic face had twisted into something monstrous as he smiled with black and bloody teeth.

They’d been waiting, she realized.

Waiting for fresh meat.

“Give us the child, Nora.” Thomas’s voice was thick, as if his throat had frozen. “You can’t keep her from us. She isn’t yours to have. The hunger must be fed.”

“Stay away!” she screamed at them and quickened her pace, changing direction, heading for the ridge. Every step was agony, the snow past her knees. Her legs burned with effort, lungs screaming for air. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to get the baby away from what her family had become.

The hunger had taken them slowly at first, after they’d eaten the dead. Thomas had been so against cannibalism, even staring death in the face, but eventually he too had caved, just as many in the other camps did.

Just as Nora did.

At first they ate the bodies of those who had died naturally but then when some discovered the hunger could not be sated, they had fallen into a gradual decline into madness that none of them had recognized until it was too late.

But Amelia’s transformation was different—faster, more violent. As if the baby’s birth had accelerated it.

The curse, Nora had thought.What was this if not a curse placed on them by the spirits of the land, for violating the codes of humanity?

To eat the flesh of another is to become a monster.

And this time, it was literal.

Another scream pierced the night, closer now. The sound of something moving through the snow, fast.

Nora ducked under a tree as she ran but her foot caught on a hidden branch. She pitched forward, managing to twist so she didn’t crush the infant. Pain exploded through her shoulder as she fell on it wrong, sinking into the snow. When she looked up, Amelia loomed over her.

Her aunt’s nightgown was soaked black with blood, steam rising from the dirty fabric. Her skin had split in dozens of places, revealing muscle and bone that writhed. Her mouth gaped open, jaw hanging by strips of flesh, teeth crowding forward. The milky eyes had turned an impossible blue-white, glowing with hungry fire.

“Please,” Nora whispered, though she knew her aunt was beyond hearing. “She’s your daughter. Josephine.”

Amelia lunged. Nora rolled, the movement sending fresh agony through her shoulder. The baby wailed, the sound swallowed by the storm. Nora’s vision blurred—from tears or exhaustion or the beginning of the change, she didn’t know.

Already she could feel it inside her, the hunger that had turned so many of them into monsters. It gnawed at her belly, whispering promises of warmth, of meat, of life. The baby’s skin looked so soft, so tender?—

“No!” Nora bit her own arm, using pain to focus. She wouldn’t become like them. Not yet. Not until the baby was safe.

In the distance, torch light flickered. Voices carried on the wind—human voices. A search party? Or people from the other camp?

People who had already turned.

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