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.

Vera followed the smoke until the trees thinned and a clearing opened in front of her. A cabin stood in the middle of it. Bark-covered walls, a steep roof, a stone chimney pushing gray smoke into the cold sky. The windows were dark. The door was shut. She crouched behind a fallen log at the edge of the clearing and watched. Her knee throbbed under her hand. The baby did not move. She counted to two hundred. No one came out. No sound from inside but the low pop of a fire. A cabin like this, alone in the woods, with a fire going and no one watching the road — it could be a trapper's place. It could be bait. She had seen men use fires to draw the living in. She had also seen people hide because hiding was the only way to stay alive. She could not tell from here. She had maybe six days left. She could not waste one being wrong. Then she saw the lantern. It hung from a hook beside the door, black metal with glass panels. Three candles burned inside it, steady and bright in the afternoon gray. Someone had lit it and hung it out in daylight. Someone who wanted travelers to see. Vera stared at the flames. A trap would be quiet. A trap would not waste candles. The dead did not light fires, and the dead did not keep watch. She stood up. Her legs shook. She crossed the clearing slow, both hands open at her sides so anyone watching from inside would see them empty. Halfway across she smelled herbs — something dry and green burning in the chimney smoke. Not pine. Not trash. Medicine. She stopped at the door and knocked twice with the flat of her hand. The door opened a crack. An old woman looked out at her — gray hair, a knife held low and ready. Her eyes went to Vera's belly, then to the soft gray skin along Vera's jaw. The woman did not flinch. She opened the door wider. Behind her Vera saw stone walls, bundles of dried plants hanging from the beams, a kettle on a low fire. Jars on a shelf. A cot with clean blankets. The room smelled of crushed leaves and woodsmoke. "You're turning," the woman said. "And you're carrying." "Three weeks in," Vera said. "She has about one left. I was told there's a bloodline in Eucalypt. A cure." The woman looked at her a long moment. Then she stepped back from the door. "Come inside before something else smells you," she said. "I can't give you what you came for. But I know who can, and I know the road." Vera crossed the threshold. The door shut behind her. For the first time in three weeks, she was indoors.

Vera sat by the fire with a tin cup in her hands when the old woman froze at the window. The kettle hissed. The old woman set down her knife and crossed to the door in three quick steps. She did not speak. She lifted a bundle of dried leaves and small bone charms from a hook on the wall and pressed it into Vera's hands. The leaves smelled sharp and clean. "Hold this against your skin," the woman said. "They followed you." Vera went to the window. Past the clearing, where the trees opened toward the road, a tall stone marker stood half-swallowed by brush. Carved bones ran along its edges. She had passed it on the way in without seeing it. Now she saw the shapes around it — six, maybe seven dead, swaying in the dusk. The bell she had hung on the road two days back lay quiet now. They had stopped at the stone. They had lost the sound. Then they had found her scent on the wind and turned toward the cabin. The lantern by the door burned steady. Three small flames in the dark. A beacon. "The light," Vera said. "It's pulling them." The old woman was already moving. She pulled a cloth from a drawer and threw it over Vera's shoulders. "Stay low. Press the pouch to your throat and your belly. The eucalyptus covers the smell of the turn." She opened the door a hand's width. The closest dead was forty paces out and closing. The woman reached up, lifted the lantern off its hook, and pinched each candle dead with her bare fingers. The glass went black. She set the lantern inside on the floor and shut the door. She slid a bar across it. Vera crouched under the window with the herb bundle against her neck. The cabin went dark except for the low red of the hearth. Outside, a dragging footstep passed the wall. Then another. A hand scraped the bark siding near the door. Vera held her breath. The baby did not move. The footsteps slowed. The scraping stopped. Something groaned and shuffled off toward the trees. The old woman stood with her back against the door and listened until the woods went quiet. When she finally moved, she lit a single candle on the table, not the lantern. "They'll come back at first light if we stay," she said. "We leave before dawn. The road to where you need to go is three days on foot. I have a pack ready." Vera looked down at the pouch in her hands. The leaves were crushed where she had gripped them. She nodded. The cabin was not safe anymore. The cure was still days away. She had maybe five.