Vera Ashwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Vera Ashwood pressed a hand to her belly and felt her daughter kick once, weak as a moth. Six months gone, and the baby was still alive inside a body that had started to rot three weeks ago. The wave had caught Vera at the edge of the river crossing. It had not finished her. A man named Hollis told her about the cure before he died — a bloodline in Eucalypt, untainted, the last clean thread. He was bitten an hour later. Vera kept walking because no one else knew, and the baby moved less every day. The road ran straight through autumn forest, logs split and fallen on both sides, trees pressed so tight she could not leave the path. She heard them before she saw them. Wet feet on dirt. A dragging sound. She looked back. Six of the dead had stepped onto the road behind her, and more were pushing out from between the trunks. They had her scent. She tried to run. Her right knee buckled. The skin there had gone soft last week. She could not outpace them. She knew it inside ten steps. The gap was closing. Vera dug into her coat and pulled out the bell trap. She had taken it off a dead trapper two days back — a wooden frame strung with metal chimes, rigged to a trip cord. She set it in the middle of the road and ran the cord low between two fallen logs. Her fingers shook. She tied the knot twice to be sure. Then she limped on, past a bend, until she saw the shape ahead: a low wooden shelter built for travelers, sloped roof, gaps between the planks. A stream ran under it. She climbed down into the cold water, ducked beneath the boards, and held still. The chimes went off behind her. The sound was huge — a flat, ringing clatter that bounced off the trees. She heard the dead turn. Feet shuffled back toward the noise. One of them moaned, close, then farther. The current dragged her scent downstream and away from the road. She pressed her back against a support post and breathed through her teeth. The baby kicked again, twice this time. Vera put both hands over her stomach and counted to a hundred. When she climbed out, the road behind her was empty. The dead had clustered around the broken trap, confused, pawing at the chimes. She could not go back the way she had come. She turned and looked ahead, where the forest thinned and a thread of woodsmoke rose above the trees. A chimney. A roof. Someone was burning a fire out here, alone, in a country full of the dead. Vera wiped river water from her face and started walking toward it. She had no other choice. Her daughter had maybe a week left.