Led to the Slaughter Read online

  No one has said anything, but much of the tension has left the cabin, as if everyone is secretly relieved. I would be angry with them if I didn’t feel something of the same emotion. My last memory of Bayliss is that strangely empty look he gave me when he awoke, as if the person I had known was gone.

  Though family and friends surround me, I feel more alone than I have since Father left us.

  December 26, 1846

  Last night, I dreamed the Donner Party was still crossing the Great Salt Flats. It was silent, without a breath of wind; the sun beat down on me, and I saw mirages of shimmering blue lakes. I was dying of thirst. I woke thirsty and melted some snow to drink, freezing despite being bundled up in the blankets and most of the clothes I possess.

  Mother has surprised me with her resilience. I never thought she had such strength, but perhaps she never had to exhibit it before because Father was always there.

  On Christmas Eve, she revealed that she had hidden some of the food Mr. Stanton brought over the mountains from California, and she fixed us soup that was far more substantial than anything we’d eaten in weeks. We all agreed it was the best Christmas present she had ever given us. We even invited Mr. Stanton and his two Indian friends to share in the feast.

  We rarely stir from our beds now, except to attend to the necessities. Our cabin has become filthy despite my mother’s constant efforts to clean it, and it is a blessing that it is too cold for us to smell the filth of our existence. We have to face away from each other when we speak, for everyone’s breath smells so foul, it is like speaking to rotting corpses.

  On Christmas Day, Salvador motioned to me that he’d like to borrow Father’s gun and go hunting. Reluctantly, I let him, and was rewarded for my trust when he returned with a hare. We had another unexpected celebration, and for a few moments that night, amid the flickering firelight and the happy faces of my brothers and sister, it was almost as if nothing was wrong, as if we were simply whiling away the winter in a snug cabin.

  That only made our hunger today seem worse. Twice more, Salvador has left with the rifle, but each time, he has returned empty-handed. Luis went out once but had no better luck.

  Bayliss remains missing. No one could survive out in the woods for this long.

  All God’s creatures have abandoned us to a purgatory of suffering.

  December 27, 1846

  All days are the same now. White snow outside; inside, we are as worms, wallowing in the dirt.

  Mother and I have decided to go seek help. That she is willing to leave her other children behind shows how desperate she is, but she knows it is better than waiting helplessly, day after day, while we starve. Certainly, I can better fulfill my promise to Father by trying to bring back help for my family than by staying here and watching them die.

  It has not stormed for several days now, though the skies are overcast, and it is a little warmer. Tommy and Jimmy are starting to fail. Though we give my brothers bigger portions of whatever meager sustenance we manage to scrounge, they are suffering the most. They cry at night, endlessly, and seem to have night terrors every hour.

  Milt Elliot has agreed to accompany us on our desperate quest to find help, and so has Eliza Williams, who has left the Donner encampment and joined us. We took her in reluctantly, as we do not have enough even for ourselves. She won’t say what drove her away from the Donners, to whom she had seemed devoted. She is a quiet, painfully shy girl, and though she is my own age, she seems much younger. When I hesitated to accept her offer to come with us, she looked me in the eye defiantly. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “I can’t stand to watch little Jimmy and Tommy suffer so.”

  I impulsively hugged her, and she had tears in her eyes when I gave her permission to come along.

  We have left our family in the care of Charles Stanton, whom we know to be a good and faithful man.

  God help us on our journey.

  January 1, 1847

  The new year, alas, has not begun well.

  It started snowing as soon as we left the cabin, but at first it was only a light flurry, so we kept going. By the time the snow began to fall in heavy, wet flakes, we’d made such good progress up the pass that we continued on.

  I was happy to finally be doing something. The miles went by so fast that I wondered if we’d made a mistake in not trying this before. I knew that others had tried, but I told myself that they’d given up too easily, or the weather hadn’t been in their favor.

  Almost as soon as I thought that, the weather turned. That first night, as the winds buffeted us behind our crude shelter of branches, we realized that our endeavor was probably hopeless. However, we pressed on the next day, and again, it seemed we were making good progress. The snow had frozen hard enough to support our weight, though it was slippery. The winds had died down by morning, and the cold was endurable.

  The second night, we managed to start a fire, and though we were all bone-tired, I think we were starting to believe we would succeed.

  The creature began to stalk us the next morning.

  We caught glimpses of it through the trees, moving faster across the snow than seemed possible. It was low to the ground and dark, and it moved silently. It was following us at first, and then, suddenly, we saw it standing just a few yards ahead of us.

  We all stopped dead.

  It started to slink toward us. I knew we couldn’t outrun it, so I raised my rifle and waited for it to come closer. When it was some ten feet away, it reared up on its hind legs, and its snout twisted into something that looked like a smile painted on a monster.

  That moment seemed to last forever.

  Then I pulled the trigger.

  That same instant, as if it had known exactly when I would fire, it dropped down and dodged to one side. A tree splintered behind the wolf; I had completely overshot it.

  I began to reload, knowing I’d be too late.

  The creature seemed to enjoy our helplessness. Elliot pulled a knife, but he was shaking so badly that I knew he’d never be able to fight the beast.

  The werewolf crouched, ready to spring.

  Then, from off to our left, where the vegetation was thickest, another of the creatures came hurtling out and latched its jaws onto the throat of the first werewolf.

  The creature who had been menacing us reared up, almost throwing off its attacker, but the second werewolf held on, and I could see its jaws tighten and blood begin to flow. Our would-be attacker thrashed about wildly but could not break free, and its convulsions slowly diminished until it lay still.

  It was over. The creature lying dead in the red snow of the trail was turning human, though I didn’t recognize him under all the blood.

  Our protector stared at us, and I knew that my companions were anything but reassured, but as I met its eyes, I knew we’d been saved by Bayliss, or whatever it was that Bayliss has become.

  He vanished back into the foliage.

  #

  The skies disappeared, replaced by a white curtain of heavy snow. We tried to continue, but the footing became impossible. The moisture seeped into every fold and wrinkle of our clothing. The light was flat, so that a hole in the ground appeared to be nothing more than a slight dip, and the trees stretched endlessly into the distance and yet were right in front of us, surrounding us, hemming us in no matter where we turned.

  We gave up. No one said anything; there was nothing to be said. We all turned around as one and headed back to the cabin.

  January 2, 1847

  We have begun to tear down the last of the ox hides that cover the ceiling of the cabin. We are cutting them into strips and boiling them. The stew is an ugly brown, pasty and cloying, and nearly inedible, even as hungry as we are.

  This morning, we woke to find a thick frost covering us. The fire had burned so low that it was nearly impossible to rekindle. The Breens have agreed to accept us into their cabin if we are willing to share the ox hides. We are moving over this afternoon. We take nothing but the clothing on our backs
and the moldering blankets, stiff with the cold.

  January 3, 1847

  I can recall a time when I thought my fellow travelers kind and generous. How naïve that now seems!

  I believe that all of us are hoarding food. I am ashamed to admit that I am. Though I have given up my portion to my brothers more than once, I always save a little for myself. We have become so wretched and selfish that I fear we are lost to God. He has turned away from us because we are so wanting in virtue.

  Today, Mrs. Graves came to our cabin and demanded that we give her the ox hides as payment on what we owe. We argued, but had little energy to resist. After the Graves family left with all the hides they could find, Stanton revealed that he’d hidden some because he’d feared that others would try to steal them.

  When these meager scraps are gone, we will have nothing left to eat.

  CHAPTER 27

  Diary of Charles Stanton, January 1, 1847

  I no longer feel the hunger. My body has wasted away, and I am a wraith wandering the woods alone. I am at peace beneath the trees, for nature, in its silence and stillness, is not cruel, simply uncaring. Nature and I are one, and soon I will lie down in the dirt and snow and become nourishment for the earth.

  The calendar says that it is a new year. Never has this date seemed so arbitrary, nor had less meaning.

  The others are talking about another attempt to leave, this time with the roster to include everyone who can still travel, which is roughly a quarter of those left alive. These are fathers and mothers who are willing to leave their children behind, because all can see that if nothing is done, everyone will die.

  I’ve been asked to go with them and I think I shall, not so much for my own sake, for I can feel that my end is near, but for the sake of the children: for Virginia Reed and her young brothers and sister, for the great brood of Breen siblings, and even for the Graveses, who have become petty and domineering but who only wish to survive, as we all do.

  So I will join them. It is a forlorn hope, but I will try one more time to save these people.

  There is another reason that I plan to go along. Someone has to protect us from the Things that hunt us. They have us trapped. They don’t want us to get away or find help. There are those among us who know that we are being preyed upon, and there are others who are unaware of that terrible fact, but the majority of the Donner Party simply refuses to believe such a thing could happen, even though they have all seen evidence of it.

  I have broached the matter with all the different groups, and only the Reeds and the Breens seem both aware of and willing to confront what faces us. To my mind, it is not a coincidence that these are the only two families that have remained mostly intact, and have kept some shreds of their dignity and integrity: the Breens because of their strong Catholic faith and the Reeds because of their strong faith in James Reed, their paterfamilias.

  I wish I had faith in either. God I can’t speak for. He’s never done anything for me. The last time I saw James Reed, he was but a pale shadow of his former domineering, assured self.

  I don’t know how many of these Monsters there are, or who among us may shift into one at any moment. I sense that most of us are still as we appear, but I don’t know for sure.

  Virginia Reed has decided to stay, to protect her family, but she took me aside at the last moment.

  “William Foster is going with you,” she said.

  “Yes,” I answered. I knew what she was going to say next.

  “He has been bitten,” she told me.

  I nodded and pointed to the pistol at my belt.

  I will go along with the others, the witting and the unwitting, and I will keep my pistol and my rifle loaded and close at hand, and endeavor to do my best to protect these poor innocents. I hope that we will draw away enough of the Beasts that the loved ones we are leaving behind will remain unmolested.

  January 2, 1847

  We have begun our journey. Each of us is armed, and each is carrying a few days’ worth of rations––if ox hide and pine nuts can be considered rations. We hope be able to hunt and forage along the way, but thus far we have seen no wildlife, not even their tracks. All God’s creatures know better than to venture out into this cold. Well… almost all.

  Franklin Graves fashioned some crude snowshoes for most of us. Those few who started out without them quickly gave up and headed back. We now number fifteen souls.

  Without the snowshoes, we would make no progress at all, but they are unwieldy, constantly coming undone and needing repair. Our progress is agonizingly slow. None of us is well-nourished enough for this trip, but we cannot wait for help to arrive in the spring. The rescue parties would find us gone, missing like our forebears on Roanoke Island. Vanished. Eaten.

  If even a few of us can survive, we will bear testimony to our misery and our struggle.

  January…?, 1847

  All I can see are the dark vertical stripes of what I think are tree trunks. Everything else is white, sky to ground. We are snow blind. Some of us can’t even see the trees, judging by how they keep walking into them. We are walking in single file, each holding onto the person in front of him, and only moving as fast as the slowest among us.

  I have seen one other thing: quick flashes of movement among the trees. I fear it will not be long before we are attacked, but we have vowed not to turn back no matter what. I believe we are being herded. It is hard to tell direction, but we climb ever higher, for we know that on the other side of this mountain is California.

  The trail, never clear in the first place, has disappeared. We simply follow the easiest route through the underbrush, which means that we encounter dead ends, cliffs, rockslides, and tangled deadfalls, and are constantly forced to double back.

  The snow must be twenty feet high. We sleep in tree wells to get out of the wind.

  I have no idea how far we’ve traveled. I’ve even lost track of the nights. Has it been six, or eight? Such confusion is a result of the hunger and cold we have been suffering. Our food seemed to run out in only a couple of days. We are dying, but no one has proposed that we turn around. No one is giving up. We will not go back.

  January…?, 1847

  Patrick Dolan has broached the unspeakable. He insists that one of us must die so the others can live. There was a moment of silence after he spoke, but no one objected. Instead, we began rationally discussing how this might happen. Someone, I don’t remember who, suggested a duel. Bill Foster suggested a lottery of some kind.

  In the end, we were not desperate enough.

  Not said aloud but surely thought by all was the fact that soon one of us will succumb, and that person will save the rest of us, giving us the energy that will make it possible to move on a little farther. Perhaps far enough to survive.

  Winter, 1847

  I am no longer putting dates in this journal. I can’t remember what day it is. This accursed journey has been my whole life, and nothing good has ever happened. I am not going to survive this; none of us will.

  Unless… unless we do the unthinkable––the forbidden.

  Franklin Graves died during the night. Soon after dawn, if the thin light that wended its way through the trees could be called dawn, Antonio also passed on. A blizzard has kept us here for days now. No one looks at the two bodies.

  Lemuel Murphy, the twelve-year-old boy, is near death. It was finally decided that some of us––I won’t record whom––should cut away strips of flesh from the corpses and feed them to the child, to try to save him. I refused. I told them that once we took that step, we would never come back.

  Lemuel need never know what he has eaten, they argued.

  I started out on this mission with the intention of saving us from the Monsters. Little did I know we would become Monsters ourselves.

  I refuse to partake, knowing that this will seal my fate. I do not judge the others. I cannot judge them, for I am tempted. It is meat, after all. Only meat.

  I walked away from the campsite. Luis and
Salvador started to follow, but I told them to stay. I watched from a distance as the others––again, I will not say whom––crouched over one of the bodies and hacked at the flesh.

  This sight was apparently too much for Patrick Dolan, who got up in the middle of this scene, muttering incoherently. He took off his clothes, the sounds he was making more like those of an animal than a man. He ran directly toward me; I don’t know if he saw me or if it was happenstance. As he ran, he began to Turn. He dropped to his hands and knees and hunched his back upward as if in pain. His face elongated and his groans became growls, his hands and feet became claws, and he howled at the gray skies in pain or triumph, I couldn’t tell which.

  I heard answering howls off in the distance, and I knew that we had been herded to this spot where we could all be consumed.

  The creature that had been Dolan started lurching back toward the campsite, where the others stood frozen. I took aim and shot it in the back.

  It flopped to the ground, then tried to get up and run toward me, but it covered only a few yards before falling over. I walked over carefully and prodded the body with the tip of the rifle. Before my eyes, the fur faded away, the snout receded, and the creature turned back into a man.

  I grabbed him by his ankles and dragged him toward the others. They left off hacking at the corpse and stood silently, watching me.

  “If you have to eat someone, you should eat he who intended to eat you,” I said; then I walked away.