Revenge and the Wild by Michelle Modesto

mother’s screams. She’d blinked several times, eyes blurry with sleep, and found her mother and father sitting on the floor beside her, their hands and feet bound with items of clothing. She looked around for Tripp but didn’t see him.
    “Run!” her mother had cried.
    Westie had imagined an attack: vampires, the Undying, werewolves, or ghouls, but saw nothing.
    “What? Why?” She looked around. The nice family she’d shared her meal with earlier stood in the room watching her.
    “Go!” her mother shouted again.
    The other family surged toward her like a machine, different parts of a single structure working together for a single purpose, to tie her up too. She was drunk on fear and confusion. She did what her mother demanded of her and ran. The boy, much bigger than her,moved in front of the door leading to the woods, so she turned and ran toward the only bedroom. The woman moved to block her way. Westie turned again, slipped on a grimy rug, and nearly went down before recovering and rushing toward the kitchen. She heard the heavy boots of the bearded man as he chased after her.
    When Westie reached the small kitchenette, she saw bare cupboards, a stove, a pump for water, and a butcher block in the middle of the room, with a bloody stump of a human leg on it. The skin on the leg was smooth and soft, and the foot was small. A child’s leg.
    Tripp . . .
    Beside the leg was a fresh pot of stew.
    A scream stuck to the sides of her throat and burned like medicine. She felt herself start to retch when the fetid smell of decay reached her nose. Despite the cold winter month, flies buzzed around a lake of congealed blood pooled on the floor below the block. Westie bent at the waist, and when she did, she saw a pile of clothes and bones behind the butcher block. She recognized the clothes. They belonged to members of the caravan.
    Her family had been warned of cannibals on the wagon trail before they left Kansas. Stories were told of folks who had been ill-prepared for the mountainous terrain and would turn on one another for nourishment when the food ran out. It wasn’t prairie sickness, the illness that turned one into the Undying, but to eat one’s own kind seemed far worse. Westie’s father had said it was a bunch of lies shopkeepers told to prevent money from leaving town. He was wrong.
    When Westie heard the floor creak behind her, she spun aroundto face the bearded man. In his hand was a knife that winked in the candlelight. As he swung down on her, she raised an arm to ward off the blow. The knife sliced clean through her bone at her elbow, leaving her arm attached by skin and tendon.
    There was hardly any pain, only pressure and a dull ache. It took her a moment to get her breath. When the man lifted his knife once more, she slipped past him. The wife and son of the bearded man seemed confused when they saw Westie come into the room, as if they hadn’t expected her to make it out alive. She was able to get past them too.
    Westie’s mother was screaming. Her father struggled with his ties. “Leave her be,” he growled in a voice that frightened her. “Run,” he said to her. “Run and don’t look back.”
    So Westie did. She ran out into the dark woods, through the snow without coat or shoes. She could hear the man’s heavy footfalls behind her. Her breath was a death shroud around her face. Petals of blood floated behind her as if she were a flower girl at a wedding until her body became so cold it stanched the flow. The man’s footsteps had been close at first. She ran and ran without looking back, until the steps slowed and finally stopped. Even then she ran. Soon her battered arm was in so much pain that she could no longer move. She slumped to her knees in the snow. The pain was razor sharp, but she dared not scream. There were moments she wanted to look at the damage but was too afraid of what she might find.
    Several times she leaned over and retched, because of the pain, and because she knew she