Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Three years ago Aubrey Wells’ sister disappeared in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Since then, Aubrey’s life has crumbled around her. Desperate for answers, she hires rancher and wilderness guide Jensen McGraw to help discover what happened to her sister.
Jensen doesn’t frighten easily. Hell, the finances of his family’s ranch are mixed up with one of the world’s most dangerous crime bosses, but he knows exactly what kind of unnatural creatures wait up in those mountains. He tries to convince Aubrey to give up, but he needs the money she offers if he wants to retake control of his ranch.
Business isn’t the only thing brewing between Aubrey and Jensen—secrets, lies, and an intense attraction threaten to derail their journey up the mountain. When a fierce snowstorm hits, and members of the crew start disappearing, Aubrey and Jensen will have to use all their wits to survive.
Because what dies in this wilderness doesn’t stay dead… it devours
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PLAYLIST
In addition to the following songs, I was also listening to the Red Dead Redemption soundtracks (particularly “Undead Nightmare” cuz obviously), as well as the soundtracks to Wind River, The Assassination of Jesse James, Hell or High Water by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
“Quattro (World Drifts In)” – Calexico
“Dream in Red” – Murder By Death
“Cruel World” – Josh Homme
“It Will Come Back” – Hozier
“Moonshiner” – Alessandro “Asso” Stefana (feat. Roscoe Holcomb)
“Epic” – Calexico
“Hunted” – Murder By Death
“Dead of Night” – Orville Peck
“God’s Gonna Cut You Down” – Johnny Cash
“Built on Bones” – Emily Scott Robinson
“Devil’s Backbone” – The Civil Wars
“So Far From Your Weapon” – The Dead Weather
“Gatekeeper” – Torii Wolf
“No One Knows” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Dead in Love” – Desert Sessions
“Demon Cleaner” – Kyuss
“The Devil’s Rejects” – Rob Zombie
“Close Behind” – Calexico
“The Curse of the Blackened Eye” – Orville Peck
“Bottom of the River” – Delta Rae
“A Girl Like Me” – Desert Sessions
“Everybody Knows That You’re Insane” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Sick, Sick, Sick” – Queens of the Stone Age
“More Human Than Human” – White Zombie
“Die by the Drop” – The Dead Weather
“Into the Hollow” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Red Fox” – Tomahawk
“Song for the Dead” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Laredo” – Tomahawk
“Big Dark Love” – Murder By Death
“Bend to the Road” – Calexico
“Hang You From the Heavens” – The Dead Weather
“River in the Road” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Man Made Lake” – Calexico
“Sunken Waltz” – Calexico
“No Horse” – The Dead Weather
“Two Silver Trees” – Calexico
“Rocking Horse” – The Dead Weather
“Totem” – Tomahawk
“Spirit” – The Devil Makes Three
“I Cut Like a Buffalo” – The Dead Weather
“Over Your Shoulder” – Calexico
“Blood, Milk and Sky” – White Zombie
“Carnage” – Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
“I am a Man of Constant Sorrow” – Alessandro “Asso” Stefana (feat. Roscoe Holcomb)
PROLOGUE
WINTER, 1847
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
The baby came during the worst of the storm.
Nora McAlister crouched beside her aunt Amelia in the cramped lean-to, watching her aunt’s breath steam in the frigid air. The roof creaked under the weight of snow, the wind whistling through the cracks. No matter how hard Uncle Thomas tried to patch up the weak spots in the shack, the cold always got in. It was like a ravenous monster itself, finding every weakness in the lean-to, of which there were many.
Now Thomas was gone, as was little Nathaniel, lost days earlier to a fate that Nora didn’t let her thirteen-year old mind think about. She couldn’t, not even for a second. She had to keep concentrating on Amelia and the baby, she had to do all she could to make sure both of them survived.
And Nora was good at that. For the last few months, all they had been doing is surviving, ever since the Donner Party got stuck at Truckee Lake. The year prior, Nora lost both her parents to tuberculosis and her father’s brother, Thomas, took her on just before they started their journey from Missouri, joining the 500 wagons en route to a better future in California. Tragedy and calamity struck again and again on the grueling journey, until it came to a head when they got snowed in at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
People began to starve. People began to die.
People started to do the unthinkable.
It was enough that Thomas, a deeply God-fearing man, broke away from the group and sought refuge for Nora and his family, finding it in a dilapidated cabin built by previous emigrants, located half a day’s walk from the camp at Truckee Lake, further up in the mountains beneath the pass. He had hoped the distance would keep his family safe from the horror that was slowly ravaging the groups.
He was wrong.
“You’re going to be okay,” Nora said to her aunt, though her voice shook from both the cold and the fear that made a permanent nest in her bones.
The lantern’s flame cast grotesque shadows across Amelia’s face, deepening the hollows of her cheeks, the dark pits of her eyes. Months of starvation had pulled her skin tight across her bones, but her belly remained swollen, distended. Unnatural. Something about the way it moved beneath the blanket made Nora’s skin crawl.
“You just need to push,” Nora whispered through her cracked lips. Her hands shook as she positioned the threadbare blanket. “Almost there, Aunt Amelia.”
But the lie tasted bitter. Nora didn’t know anything about birthing babies, but they’d been at this for hours, and something was wrong.
So wrong.
Amelia’s skin was cold to the touch, too cold for someone in labor. Her eyes had taken on a strange sheen, and the veins beneath her skin showed black against flesh that was growing paler by the hour. When she screamed, the sound was wrong—guttural, hungry. Like the sounds Uncle Thomas had made yesterday, when he’d torn into—
Nora pushed the memory away.