Consumed: Tales Inspired by the Wendigo

CONSUMED

TALES INSPIRED BY THE WENDIGO

Edited by

Henry & Hollie Snider

CONSUMED - TALES INSPIRED BY THE WENDIGO

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any electronic system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publishing house and its respective authors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover design: Cakamura Designs

Layout: Henry Snider

ISBN: 978-1-7341917-4-5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Denver Horror Collective holds the following cursed souls accountable for the evil that is CONSUMED: TALES INSPIRED BY THE WENDIGO:

Bobby Crew, Dagon, Desi D, Travis Guberud, Derrick Heisey, Amy Keller, Sarah Marxhausen, Thomas C. Mavroudis, Jess Mekeel, Renee Miller, Adrianne Montoya, Sean Murphy, Ian Neligh, Nyarlathotep, Melanie Parker, Gary Robbe, Ingrid Rochon, Matt Aragon Shafi, Jon Siegfreid, David Slay, Bret Smith, Henry Snider, Hollie Snider, Marissa Tafoya, John Thompson, Brenda Tolian, Henry Walker, Jeamus Wilkes, Carter Wilson, Jessie Yarish, Joy Yehle, and Yog-Sothoth.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD - Owl Goingback

CRAVINGS - R. Michael Burns

STARVED - Angela Sylvaine

ADAPTATION - Ian Neligh

THE SCREAMING TREE - Dana Fredsti

PLANET OF THE HUNGRY - P.L. McMillan

LIKES - Michael Gore

JOURNAL OF MILTON PARKER - Amanda Headlee

HOARD - Joy Yehle

UNSOLICITED - Wrath James White

THE HUDSON HUNGER - Ross Baxter

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY - KD Webster

ROAD DEMON - Ray Zacek

TOUCHING WOOD - Elana Gomel

EAST OF AVON - Marlin Bressi

BLOOD MOUNTAIN - Brenda S. Tolian

AN GORTA MOR - Steve Rasnic Tem

CABIN FEVER - J.T. Evans

FEAST OF THE SENSES - Christophe Maso

NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER - Josh Schlossberg,

BIOGRAPHIES

FOREWORD

Owl Goingback

Deep in the boreal forests of Canada and the Great Lakes region of the United States, in the homeland of the Cree, Ojibwe, Saulteaux, and other Algonquian speaking tribes, where long winters can bring heavy snows, freezing temperatures, starvation, and even death, there lurks a mythical creature with an insatiable appetite known as the Wendigo.

Existing in tribal folklore and first-person narratives dating back for centuries, and later recorded in the personal journals of non-native explorers, trappers, and missionaries, the Wendigo is described as terribly thin, like a corpse freshly risen from the grave, its ashen skin stretched tightly over its bones. Certain legends depict it as a giant, standing nearly fifteen feet tall, with the ability to move quickly over deep snow without sinking. Other sources say it is not a creature of flesh and blood, but a malevolent spirit capable of possessing a human and turning them into a monster.

As if this image is not frightening enough, the Wendigo is also deemed to have a ravenous hunger for human flesh. Tribal narratives insist the more the monster eats the hungrier it gets, its physical body growing in proportion to the meal just consumed so it can never be full. Never satisfied. Always hungry. So starved, the creature has been known to devour its own lips, leaving only bloody tatters, and gnaw its fingers to the bones.

Village elders insist those who break tribal laws and consume human flesh will also turn into a Wendigo, a warning against cannibalism for a people who often face brutal winters, famine, and the possibility of death by starvation. Better to perish alone in the cold than turn into a ravenous fiend whose appetite is never appeased. Better to die than risk devouring your family and loved ones in a fit of gluttony.

In the 1800s, belief in the Wendigo was so strong that villagers suspected of being cursed with the evil cannibal spirit were sometimes put to death. Such was the case with a Cree Indian named Swift Runner, who was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan after butchering and eating his wife and six children.

Disbelievers scoff at the ancient legends, declaring the Wendigo is nothing more than a fairy tale, a Native American boogeyman to keep children from wandering away from their villages. The great outdoors can be a dangerous place, especially to a child in the frozen depths of winter. Others argue it is merely a sickness of the mind, and those who find themselves suddenly craving a human Happy Meal are actually suffering from a medical condition called Wendigo psychosis.

Whether boogeyman, evil spirit, or mental illness, many maintain they have seen the beast moving quickly through the wilderness or lurking in the shadows of tall trees. Others swear to have heard its voice calling out to them, mimicking human speech in an attempt to lure them away from civilization, leading them to their doom. Even in modern times, tribal members and non-native hunters tell of hearing the voices of children crying out from the darkness of the pine forests, calling to them for help, begging them to come closer. Those who answer the siren’s call are never seen again.

A few brave souls have hunted the elusive cannibal creature over the years, determined to rid their land of its unholy presence. But it is not easy to catch a Wendigo; even harder to kill one. While multiple legends say it can be destroyed with conventional weapons, others argue the Wendigo has a heart of solid ice that must be tossed into a roaring fire in order to slay the beast.

In addition to the immoral act of consuming human flesh, ancient traditions believe the mortal sins of greed or gluttony are enough to turn a person into a Wendigo. That claim has often been applied by Native tribes to explain colonialism and the white man’s encroachment on their land. To the indigenous people of North America, the white’s man never-ending desire for more gold, wealth, and territory was looked upon as the traits of the Wendigo.

In modern times, the cannibal spirit still exists in the form of greedy corporation executives, bankers, lawyers, politicians, and those who devour natural resources without giving thought to Mother Earth or future generations. They are today’s beasts, driven by an insatiable hunger.

Within the pages of this book, you will come face to face with the ravenous Wendigo, in all of its terrifying glory and many guises, in stories written by today’s most talented authors of horror and fantasy. And you will discover the voracious creature that lies dormant inside each of us, lurking just beneath the skin, waiting to be awakened by greed, gluttony, or the delicious salty sweet taste of human flesh.

Bon appetit.

—Owl Goingback is the author of numerous novels, children’s book, screenplays, magazine articles, and short stories. He is a Bram Stoker Award Lifetime Achievement Recipient, a Bram Stoker Award Winner for Best Novel and Best First Novel, a Nebula Award Nominee, and a Storytelling World Awards Honor Recipient.

CRAVINGS

R. Michael Burns

The world came back to her in bits and pieces.

First, the cold, sitting heavily over her, body aching in a dozen places, right ankle throbbing.

Then, sounds: the too-close burble of running water, and louder, a mechanical chugging, grinding noise. Above it all, the wind, howling like a feral thing.

Next, a vague smell of gasoline, and the ghosts of long-eaten fast food. Sweat overpowering her deodorant, masking the botanical scent of her shampoo.

Last, the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.

Shaking, Liz Miller forced her eyes open.

Shadows bobbed and floated all around, deepening here, fading there, resolving themselves with nauseating slowness into a scene that nearly made sense.

Speedometer dead. Vents breathless.

Steering wheel cloaked in a deflated airbag with a smear of blood in its center.

Windshield unbroken but blinded with snow, thick enough now to let only a flat gray light filter in.

Wipers frozen in their tracks.

Her breath fogging the air.

The Volvo’s engine grumbled noisily, damaged but not dead.

Shit.

She managed to raise a shaking hand and crank the key in the ignition, killing the sputtering engine. Couldn’t take the chance that the tailpipe might be blocked, slowly filling the car with carbon monoxide poisoning her. Poisoning the baby.

Jesus, the baby. Did the crash — ?

She put a hand to her round belly, pressed gently. As if in response, the little one gave her a hearty jab. Alive, mommy! that poke told her. Alive and kicking!

Liz breathed a shivering sigh.

The memory of what had happened crept back in jagged puzzle pieces, somehow both dull and vivid at once, and more than a bit sickening. She’d been heading home from a checkup with Doctor Crawford, her OB/GYN in Saint Cloud, hard-driven snow strafing the windshield. The storm reduced visibility to nearly nothing, the winter-bleak Minnesota landscape all but erased in every direction. Clusters of cottonwoods punctuating the gaps between farmers’ fields and iced-over lakes stood like skeletal gray monsters stalking through the frenzied flakes. Everything else was white.

She had almost reached the exit to the tiny town of Spirit Lake—and home—when an invisible stretch of ice had given the Volvo a life of its own, a sudden blast of screaming wind ushering it along. She tried to steer into the skid, but the wind hadn’t allowed it. She’d had barely an instant to brace herself before the car went off the road and nosedived into the snowy ravine of Little Ghost Creek.

The creek, she thought, mind slowly reassembling the pieces. That’s what I’m hearing.

Liz could only guess what exactly happened then—the crunch of metal as the car smacked into the creek’s stony bed, hood-down at a steep angle, the seatbelt grabbing her shoulder, pressing too tight across her swollen belly, the airbag punching her in the face sufficiently hard to bloody her nose. The impact had rung her bell badly enough that consciousness slipped away for…how long? The amount of snow on the windshield argued for a longish time, but the way it was coming down, that quantity could accumulate pretty fast.

As she studied it, the snow caking the windows lit up brilliantly, then fell dark again, the gloom seeming all the deeper by contrast.

Thundersnow, Liz thought dully. She remembered now, seeing a flash or two dazzling the all-but-featureless landscape as she drove, marveling that lightning could strike in the heart of an almost apocalyptic blizzard. It felt like something from a nightmare, this storm, sudden and savage and relentless, not just a brutal collision of snow and wind, but…deliberate, somehow.

Predatory.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, a long shadow fell over the window at her right, muted by the snow but slender and moving fast—if it had been there at all.

She turned her head to see, but at once a thousand aches of various degrees woke up throughout her body, plowing that disquiet under with dizzying speed. Her head throbbed and jagged glass pain shot up from her ankle. Still, as best she could tell, she hadn’t been too badly hurt. No bones broken, anyway, probably thanks to the pugilistic airbag.

And the little one? she thought, heart racing. Alive and kicking, but uninjured? What if the seatbelt had done…whatever, some kind of injury when it grabbed her? Or the airbag?

Panic loomed over Liz, ready to consume her. She had given so much to this pregnancy—eight months of her life, and thousands of dollars in doctor’s bills, hundreds more in baby gear. And so much more than that. She’d given her heart and soul to the little one, to this missing piece in her otherwise satisfying life. If she lost the baby now, so close to the day they would first be face-to-face, it would tear her apart. She couldn’t, she just couldn’t—

Liz took a deep, shuddering breath, and shoved the fears aside. Losing her shit now would just make everything worse.

Gotta make a plan, she said, only somewhat comforted by the sound of her own voice. Gotta figure out how to get us out of here.

Gotta keep us both alive.

The thought struck her like a sucker punch, brutal in its stark reality. Even as close as they were to home—no more than fifteen miles—they could easily die here, stuck in a car the storm had probably already rendered invisible from the road, the snow burying it like an oversized casket.

With each passing minute, the cold asserted itself all the more.

Outside, the wind rose, a howling beast. It sounded strangely cruel, mocking, but cajoling, too. Sly, almost…seductive.

Liz felt a sudden pang, wildly out of place in the moment despite its familiarity in recent months. Hunger, deep and demanding.

Spare ribs, the ones from The Smokin’ Pig, swimming in sauce.

All at once she wanted them more than she wanted warmth, more than she wanted something to soothe the pain in her ankle, the aches throughout her body. Nice juicy pink flesh to gnaw right off the bone. God, yes. Everything would be so much better if she just had some tasty meat to chow down on.

The wind moaned over the Volvo, as if whispering its agreement.

Liz closed her eyes and drew a slow, shuddering breath.

"Okay, lady—focus. You have to get out of this car. You have to get somewhere safe. At least get help."

She groped for her purse, but it seemed to be twenty feet away in the footwell on the passenger’s side, and the seatbelt still had a good firm grip on her.

Her hand found the buckle, but for a moment she hesitated. Once she took the belt off, nothing would stop her from falling forward out of the driver’s seat, into the steering column and the dead airbag. But she had to get to her purse, to the phone inside.

Breathing much like she’d learned in her birthing classes, Liz braced herself. She grunted as pain sizzled through her injured ankle, but forced herself to push the button. The seatbelt let go and she dropped forward, but caught herself enough to not make things too much worse. Still, the purse remained out of reach, teasing—so close and yet so far, as her dad had always said.

Oh, God, her dad. Becoming a grandpa would have thrilled him to the bone, even under the current circumstances, if the goddamn stroke hadn’t robbed him of the chance.

Liz pushed the sudden grief away and strained for the purse. Her fingernails brushed the strap, moved it the tiniest bit…but couldn’t quite snag it.

Outside, the wind made a sound almost like laughter. Lightning flared again, and in the brilliance she thought—she swore—she saw that long slender shadow move over the snow that blinded the windows and windshield. Some thing moving through the storm, or some manifestation of the storm itself.

Stop spooking yourself, she said, breath fogging the air. "It’s nothing." But the fear and the chill sank just that much deeper into her aching body. The wind howled, and that crazy craving rose again.

We’ll be okay, Little One, Liz whispered, giving her stomach a reassuring rub. We will, we’ll be just fine. Mommy promises.

It seemed both silly and vital to say it, but mostly it was a stall tactic, giving her a minute to steel herself for what she knew came next.

Sweat beaded on her forehead as she raised her right leg, the pain there building from a sting to an agony, up over the absurdly-wide console between the seats and into the footwell on the other side. She grunted again, except this time it was more like a muffled scream. But at least it was done, the worst of it. Kicking the purse closer still hurt, but not quite as badly. And it did the trick—the gray faux-leather bag slipped just near enough to grab.

Breathing hard, she snatched it up and unzipped the section where she kept her phone. She hadn’t bothered to plug it in for the GPS on the way home—she could practically make this drive in her sleep, even with a blizzard raging. And anyway, she hadn’t expected a goddamn blizzard. Scattered snow flurries, the TV geniuses had said. Occasionally gusty winds.

Expect the world to end would have been a lot more accurate.

She plucked the phone out of her purse, clutched it like a drowning person grasping at a bit of floating debris. But even as she went to turn it on, the wind rose again, all sly and subtle murmurs, and some dark thing deep inside her twisted and stretched, painful and hollow. With a soft groan, Liz shoved the phone into the holder affixed to the dash then tore into another section of her purse, tossing various items to the floor until she found what she’d thought she might: a couple of Milky Way minis and a half-full tin of Altoids.

Frantic, she tore the wrappers off the tiny candy bars and stuffed them into her mouth, chewed a little and swallowed. The curiously strong mints didn’t last any longer, all of it landing in a stomach that felt cavernously empty despite the constant weight of the baby in her womb.

The little repast didn’t so much as touch her hunger.

Jesus, Liz said, laughing a breathless laugh. "What the hell is wrong with me? How can I be thinking about food right now?"

The storm seemed to sigh at the question.

Liz dropped the wrappers and empty tin and grabbed the phone again, pushed the power button.

The phone winked to life…and the No Service message appeared almost immediately. She tapped the Make Emergency Call button, but within a second or two the phone flashed a new message: Unable to Complete Call.

She heard herself whimper like a hurt child. "Goddammit. God-fucking-dammit."

It didn’t make any sense—Spirit Lake was pretty close to the middle of nowhere, true, but even along this mostly-forgotten stretch of Highway 10, there were cell towers.

Maybe they iced over, or blew down… Hell, maybe one was struck by lightning.

As if prompted by the thought, another flash shone through the gathering snow on the Volvo’s windows, and with it, a renewed gale of wind, clawing at the car, shrieking at her.

The hunger in her belly growled in response, growing stronger.

God, ribs…juicy, meaty ribs…or steak. Yeah, steak tartare, raw and luscious….

She desired it almost fanatically, like nothing else in the world mattered, not even getting out of this motorized coffin. She vaguely recalled several of the pregnancy websites she’d consulted over the last months said any strange cravings would taper off in the third trimester, but it hardly mattered. She wanted —needed—food. Now.

Little One must have an appetite, Liz said, giving her belly a rub. And it struck her, not for the first time, that carrying a child was more than a little like having a pampered parasite living inside her, ingesting nutrients from her body, making her flesh its home. Miracle or not, there was something distinctly creepy about the whole thing. Never mind that she had invited the little one in—went to great lengths, in fact, to have that life growing within her. Her mother very vocally disapproved when Liz announced her plan to undergo in vitro fertilization, just as Liz knew she would. A single woman without even the prospect of a husband had no business getting pregnant, and on purpose at that. The deep disappointment in Mother’s voice had an altogether too familiar ring to it, echoed all the way from Liz’s childhood. The way Liz saw it, though, she worked from home almost exclusively and made decent money, so she had more than time and income enough to give a child a very happy life—better than a lot of kids surviving their parents’ broken marriages, as she had. The fact that she wasn’t all that interested in partnering up with a man—or anyone, for that matter—hardly meant she didn’t ever want to be a mommy. Whatever might be missing from her life, it sure as hell wasn’t a husband, thanks. And if anyone thought that made her selfish, well, they could judge her by what kind of a mother she turned out to be, and what kind of kid she raised.

Mommy’s sweet little parasite.

Little One, I love you. Even if you do creep me out sometimes.

Little One. Her mother didn’t much approve of Liz’s decision to wait until the baby was born to learn the sex, either. The kid would have time enough for labels, though, and all the issues that came with them. For now, let it just be the Little One. There’d been, of course, absolutely no possibility her mother would understand that attitude, much less accept it. The not knowing was clearly getting under her skin, a fact that gave Liz a bit more satisfaction than she liked to admit.

Even as these thoughts passed through her mind, Liz clicked her phone off, waited for it to power down completely, then turned it on again, because everyone knew the first trick to solving any electronic problem was to get out and then get back in. But the No Service notice popped right back up…and then the low battery warning flickered and the phone went dark.

Liz felt her whole body go slack, her head dropping, defeated.

I charged it, she muttered, mind reeling between anger and incredulity. I charged the damn thing to a hundred percent before I left for Saint Cloud, in case of—

In case of an emergency.

Well, shit.

She meant for it to sound casual, the way she might mutter it under her breath if Starbucks happened to be out of soy milk, but it came out as something closer to a sob. Scared. Because this really was a matter of life and death. It might be days before anyone figured out she hadn’t made it home—God knew her mother wouldn’t check in on her anytime soon—and several days more before anyone spotted the Volvo’s butt-end sticking out of the just-deep-enough gouge of Little Ghost Creek. By the time the blizzard ended, the whole damn car would probably be no more than a nondescript lump in the snow. And when the plows finally came, they’d just throw more snow onto the mound alongside the road.

And by then I’ll suffocate…or freeze…or starve to death…

The last thought was absurd, and she knew it. The snow might seal her in enough to suffocate her, and the cold could certainly do her in. Her and the Little One. But starvation took a good long time—weeks, even. She’d dehydrate long before that, if nothing else finished her.

But she didn’t feel thirsty at all.

She felt hungry.

Ravenous.

Outside the car, the wind rose, fell, and rose again, seeming almost to…almost to…

Almost to speak.

She didn’t know the language, but she understood the words.

So hungry. So very hungry.

She scavenged through her purse one more time, came up with a couple of cough drops. Chewed and swallowed them without even tasting the mentholated cherry flavor advertised on their wrappers. There was a beeswax lip balm, and she ate that, too, not really letting herself think about just how fucking crazy it was to chow down on this non-food, just trying to fill that suddenly-gaping chasm inside her.

You mean the chasm Little One was supposed to fill? The empty space you thought a child could blot out of your life? Eight months in and you still feel hollow. How much worse will it be when your womb is empty again?

She flung the rest of the purse’s contents to the floor and rummaged the glovebox. Insurance papers and vehicle registration, a few old maps, mini Kleenex pack, flashlight, pocket knife, owner’s manual, a couple of spare fuses. No food. Nothing even remotely edible.

Liz slumped against the steering wheel with its dead-balloon airbag, breathing hard, almost panting, close to tears all over again, ankle thudding pain up her leg.

She pinched her eyes shut and listened as the wind whirled and whined, insinuating things she didn’t want to think about.

Little One gave her a stout kick, strong enough to hurt some.

So very hungry.

An image rose behind her closed eyelids—those ribs again, but raw, raw and bloody, and nothing had ever looked so delicious to her, so absolutely perfect…

You’re losing it, lady, she said, her voice much too thin and reedy. "Raw pork’s a terrible idea even for someone who’s not pregnant. And when the hell did you become such a carnivore?"

She only ever ate meat a few times a week, pregnant or not, nothing more than the odd hamburger or ham sandwich.

Now she craved it as if her life depended on it.

Is that you, Little One? Liz patted her belly with a hand that shook from the clinging cold. "Are you the big meat-eater?"

The blizzard went on murmuring. Little One gave another fierce kick, as if objecting to the chill.

Panic threatened again, frigid and smothering. All at once, the Volvo’s interior felt much too small, much too dark and cold. A metal coffin in a shallow grave.

Breathe, Liz said, forcing herself to take long, deep breaths. Inhale slowly, exhale even slower. The air in here’s getting stale. Gotta crack a window.

She tried the button, but of course she’d killed the engine and turned the car off, so the power windows wouldn’t budge.

Her hand shook badly as she reached out, down, to turn the key in the ignition. It seemed to take far more strength than it ever had before.

The car didn’t so much as sputter. The dashboard remained dark. The Volvo was dead as a frozen fish.

Oh, Jesus, for some fish…some nice raw sashimi…

She tried it a couple more times, because what the hell else could she do? But the car remained silent as —

— as a tomb. Yeah.

Stop it. She said it in something very like her mother’s no-nonsense voice. "Just stop it."

Still, she needed fresh air, even just a quick breath of it, just to clear her head of these wandering, malicious thoughts.

She grabbed the handle and tried to open the driver’s door.

It didn’t budge.

She put her shoulder into it, pushed with all the force she could muster, but the damn door didn’t move an inch. Either the locking mechanism had jammed, or ice had welded the door shut. Maybe both, the way her luck was going. Whatever the case, the door stayed closed, and she knew she didn’t have the energy to wrestle with it. It took most of her strength just to keep herself pressed into the seat, struggling against the car’s unnatural angle. Her uninjured leg ached with the effort.

Now Liz did cry. She just couldn’t fight it off anymore. But it wasn’t the fear, or the frustration, or the ever-deepening chill, or the pain. It was that rumbling emptiness in her stomach, her body or the Little One’s—and weren’t they the same thing?—demanding sustenance.

Ribs, raw and red, in a nice thick sauce of fresh blood…

The words seemed almost to come from the storm, to speak on the gales, or to issue from something in the storm.

That looming panic closed in like an avalanche. She couldn’t call out, couldn’t get out, and anyway what the hell would she do if she did? Even without a surely-sprained ankle, did she really think an eight-months-pregnant woman dressed for a short drive could climb out of a creek bed in several feet of snow and then walk for miles through a raging blizzard to some kind of rescue? It would be suicide—more than suicide, because her death would mean Little One’s death, too.

The thought of it made her want to scream, but her throat couldn’t quite manage it.

Why the hell didn’t I pack snacks, a cooler, fast food, some-damn-thing?

So very hungry.

She couldn’t tell if the thought was hers, or the wind’s…or the Little One’s…

At some point, she’d started shivering intensely, but only now did she notice. The car was swiftly turning into a freezer on steel-belted radials.

Little One made itself known again, thrashing around inside her, as if eager to get out.

Not yet, Liz muttered, tears in her voice. You still have nearly a month, kiddo. You’re not done cooking.

God, why that phrase? Why had she thought of it like that?

The wind cried and sighed and sang, and the emptiness within her spread itself out like a living thing, wanting, needing, demanding.

Her stomach gave a painful growl, hunger digging in its teeth.

Parasites soak up a lot of nutrients, Liz thought, the idea digging into her brain like maggots into carrion, inescapable. Parasites are loaded with nutrition.

Little One isn’t a parasite, Liz said, each word a half-strangled sob. "It’s my child. My baby."

She thought of the knife she’d dug out of the glovebox. She couldn’t help herself, not with that nightmarish wind screaming in her ear, that sickening squirming inside her.

No, she wept, her voice a tiny, broken thing. No, I’m not…I’m not crazy…

What’s eating you, Liz? The words inside her skull wafted on the wind, but seemed to come from deep within her, and far beyond, and nowhere at all. Oh, yes, it’s the Little One, isn’t it? It shouldn’t even have teeth yet, but it does—don’t you feel them?

She shook her head frantically, as if she could dislodge the voice, the thoughts. Her head throbbed, getting worse by the second. Tears flowed freely now, tears of pain and hunger, of horror, tears of perfect hopelessness.

The knife, Liz. Women have had caesarian sections since…well, since the days of Caesar, right? Cut the parasite out before it tears you open from inside—before it eats its way out—

Then you can eat.

The wind seemed to laugh, the vicious cackle of a lunatic crouched over his dying victim.

I won’t, Liz said, trying to work any measure of resolve into her voice. I won’t…I won’t. It was beyond crazy, beyond unthinkable. An abomination.

And yet somehow the pocketknife was in her hand, the blade out. In the deepening gloom of the Volvo’s claustrophobic interior, the stainless steel looked gray as ash.

Eat or be eaten, Liz, the gales murmured. What’s it gonna be?

The wind seemed to laugh again.

Outside, that skeletal shadow fell across the snowblind windshield once more, lingering now. Waiting.

The hand holding the knife moved as if on its own, independent of her