The Hunger

by Alma Katsu

The man was a self-taught shark with cards and forgot nothing—the exact type to hold a grudge, and to act on one.

He wasn’t a saint, wasn’t even a good man. He was strong physically but had always suspected that deep down, he was weak.

It all seemed wrong: separating from the larger part of the wagon train, heading down this unknown trail, stopping for a picnic as if this were a church event when they should be moving as quickly as possible.

In the darkness she softened beneath his fingers; she came to him like a kind of smoke that clung to your hair, your clothes, the inside of your lungs.

The women had their own kind of power, he knew. All it would take was one accusation and they would be at him.

“Soon all the best girls will be taken,” one of the younger women chimed in. Sarah Fosdick. She was only recently married herself, and obviously a little drunk. “You’ll be left with an old sow.” She laughed.

But no good ever came of worrying, unless there was an action to be taken.

More likely they figured they could depend on the kindness of their trailmates if they ran out of supplies. Well, they’d be disappointed if they came to James Frazer Reed for a handout. Christian charity could only go so far.

Foolishness and pleasure, that was what the members of the wagon train wanted.

Reed didn’t believe in that nonsense, but one thing was clear: She was stepping out on her husband, and making George look foolish just when he needed the wagon train behind him.

Donner was so tall compared to Bridger that when he thrust out his hand, he nearly struck the man in the face.

He hoped Christian decency would keep these men from lying to them outright, but he’d been disappointed by Christian goodness in the past. Few men valued the lives of strangers over profit.

“I don’t believe in monsters,” Stanton said. “Only men who behave like them.”

There was no power in what she practiced, only attention—increasingly, of the unwanted variety.

When she had imagined the journey, she had imagined hardship, and hunger, and dirt that clung everywhere, like another skin, and could never be sloughed off. But she hadn’t imagined this—the people, that she would be surrounded by so many other people, unable to escape their strange, inexplicable prejudices and their sudden, violent changes of mood.

Reed shot the remaining oxen in the head so they wouldn’t suffer any further, and he imagined, though he was not fanciful, that he saw in their eyes a final flicker of relief.

But looking back, he knew, was a trap. They’d come this far. There would be no going back, not now, not ever.

“Proof?” Patrick Breen rolled his eyes. “I don’t see no proof, just a lot of ignorant heathen nonsense. I trust in the Lord—you hear that, boy, the Lord—to guide and protect me.”

Lord lord!

He shook his head slowly as he backed away, a sad smile creeping across his face. “Then the Lord must be mightily displeased with you, because he has led you into the valley of death. Make peace with your Lord before it is too late, because the hungry ones are coming for you.”

the Bible teaches forgiveness in others so that God may bestow forgiveness on all.

Amen

Hope, Tamsen realized, could be a very dangerous thing, especially when dealt to desperate hands.

The mills of God grind slowly, yet grind exceedingly fine.