Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
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—”
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.