Dread Nation (Dread Nation, #1)

by Justina Ireland

“One summer, the garden was plagued by a rabbit. This wasn’t no ordinary rabbit, this was a hare of unnatural ability. It would always find a way inside of the fencing, filling itself up on the fruits of our labor. It was, as Momma said, a bastard of a rabbit.” Katherine gasps and looks around. “Jane! Such language.” “Let me finish my story. Anyway, Auntie Aggie and a few of the boys put out snares and traps galore, everything from crates baited with carrots and bits of lettuce to complicated tie snares I found in an old frontiersman’s book Momma had from her dead daddy. Nothing worked. Every morning we’d go out and see the parsley munched down to nubs, or nibbles in the cabbage. The frustration was enough to put one off of gardening altogether, truth be told. “But Auntie Aggie never let it faze her. Every night she would set out the same kind of snare, a simple loop knot that someone had taught her long ago. And every morning, when the rabbit wasn’t caught, she’d retie that snare, same as she did the day before. I asked her once if she was scared the hare was going to eat the whole garden clean before that trap of hers caught him. “‘Jane,’ she said, ‘look at this garden. Look at the lettuces and those beans! And those tomatoes? They are especially fine this year, don’t you agree? Trust me on this: it’s just nature for creatures like him to get greedy.’ That was all she said to me.” Katherine’s listening now, her eyes narrowed. “So what happened?” I grin. “She was right. A...