Ella Holland wanted a simple life, but she would have settled for survival.
Life in the ravaged wilds of Appalachia is dangerous, and most folks don't live past fifty. Even if sickness or starvation doesn't get you, the rival clans, or shifty nomads, or the unbred monsters that roam the hills will. This is why a clan must stick together at all costs, nestled in whatever patch of peaceful land it has scratched out for itself.
When a wandering drifter turns up with an army of ravenous pigmen at his heels, Ella Holland and the rest of her clan will have to confront the all the harsh realities they've kept sealed outside their walls, the lies they've told themselves, and even the specter of their own extinction.
Ella Holland wanted a simple life, but she would have settled for survival.
Life in the ravaged wilds of Appalachia is dangerous, and most folks don't live past fifty. Even if sickness or starvation doesn't get you, the rival clans, or shifty nomads, or the unbred monsters that roam the hills will. This is why a clan must stick together at all costs, nestled in whatever patch of peaceful land it has scratched out for itself.
When a wandering drifter turns up with an army of ravenous pigmen at his heels, Ella Holland and the rest of her clan will have to confront the all the harsh realities they've kept sealed outside their walls, the lies they've told themselves, and even the specter of their own extinction.
Sparse snowflakes drifted down from an ashen sky to meet their brethren lying heaped on tree boughs and in shallow drifts. A haggard precipice jutted out from the tree line, facing the early winter morning that bloomed a pallid gray under a cloudy sky.
A lone figure stumbled out from the forest onto the cliff, a tattered cloak clutched around him. Hunched and shivering, he paused at the edge to scan the hill-rumpled horizon and gauge the distance to the ice-choked creek below. Something neither purely human nor animal bellowed deep in the forest, back the way he’d come. His hooded head snapped back around to face the call. Another howl echoed through the frosted woods to answer the first.
The man pulled the flintlock rifle from his shoulder with trembling hands and fumbled with a paper cartridge, only to drop the charge into the snow. He cast his rifle aside with a low curse and instead strung his bow. He waited with a nocked arrow, the shaft rattling against the yew, until the growing caterwaul in the forest banished all hope.
His hand went to the blade at his side as he sank to his knees. He ripped it free of its sheath and brought it up to his throat. He closed his eyes, took one last deep breath … and stopped. He lowered the blade and turned to face the east, beyond the cliffside. He sniffed the air carried up to him by a teasing breeze.
The cloaked form struggled to his feet, returning the short sword to its sheath and unstringing his bow, leaving the fouled rifle behind. He swung a shaking boot over the edge, searching for a foothold on the flinty crag, crawling away from his stalkers and toward the scent of a human settlement.
The children of the Tucker clan gawped at the fresh blanket of snow so pure you kept from walking in it as much to keep from spoiling it as to keep your feet dry. Those Tucker boys old enough to heft a gun filtered out of homes and shops in buckskin leggings and padded coveralls, boots wrapped in plastic to keep out the damp, bows and rifles and muskets bristling as they gathered in little packs in the street. Their breath fogged the crisp morning air under the chilled, muffled glow of a gray sky.
The first snowfall of winter, lacking enough ice yet on the ponds or creeks to cut for root cellars, marked a new hunting season for the clan. Brown-furred rabbits stood out against their new white background, and the little critters were loath to run and soak their fur, even to escape a young man hankering for rabbit stew on a cold day.
Young Amos Taylor, though scarcely a month into his apprenticeship, found the same liberality with his master as the other boys. The kid was a quick learner, he’d put in good work for the gunsmith the week previous, and he promised to bring back enough rabbits to feed the master’s family for a week. The gunsmith, likely craving some rest and solitude of his own, assented with the magnanimity of someone who wasn’t coming out way ahead in this deal and waved Amos Taylor to the door.
At the back of the shop, the gunsmith’s eldest daughter looked up from the yellow-leafed tome on medieval gunpowder corning and swept hair the color of wash-water from her eyes. She watched the handsome young man shoulder his rifle and lead his little brother out of the shop and into the snow to join the hunters waiting outside.
When Amos had gone, the daughter turned back to the book she’d borrowed from next door and pretended to read while her father lit up a pipe. He settled himself onto a wooden stool with a contented sigh and stared out the plexiglass garage window at the cotton-white neighborhood.
“Hey, Pa,” she said, still fixed on the book in front of her, “seein’ how all the fellers got the day off, and it is a Tuesday…”
The pipe popped out of Phil Holland’s mouth and became a wand he jabbed at his daughter. “Oh, no, you don’t, Ella. I don’t mind you spending time with your friends, but we ain’t got the rations to waste on any of your hare-brained cooking ideas. Everybody in the clan still remembers what you all poisoned us with last Harvest Eve.”
That was a low blow. No one had died, after all.
Ella closed the gunpowder book and waved away the motes of decaying book-dust now churning in the lantern light as she turned a plaintive face to her father. “If it ain’t good, I’ll give up my rations and eat up whatever we make.”
“Ain’t you got the washin’ to do?”
“Not in this cold snap. But I think Bill’s makin’ another go at the guncotton next door, and he might use the help if you need me busy.”
That did the trick. “Uh uh. No way. It’s bad enough he’s got you grindin’ powder over there, I won’t have you spillin’ acid on yourself or getting blowed to smithereens whenever Bill lets his mixin’s get away from him. Go experiment with food if you want, but you stay away from Bill’s experiments. Go on, go.” Her father sighed and waved Ella toward the door. His voice held the resignation of a man who’d long since given in to the stubborn ruination of unified women, but who still feigned a fast standing out of principle.
Ella beamed as she only did for close kin. “Thanks, Pa.”
The hunters had not left town by the time she stepped out into the snow, and Ella averted her gaze. She had a reputation for staring, despite her years-long effort to correct the notion. She’d always had a wide-eyed look about her, like she was either scared witless or over-awed by anything she laid eyes on. She snuck a glance back toward the gate to see some of the hunters, Amos Taylor among them, waving at her. She dared to wave back, and she straight away crossed the path of the oncoming oxcart they’d been trying to warn her about. When the oxen had settled and everyone else’d had their laugh, Ella tucked her blazing cheeks into the collar of her coat and trudged the rest of the way across town without exchanging a further “howdy” with a single clansman.
At the door to the butcher’s home, she knocked as if afraid to break the door off its hinges. When no one answered, she ventured another knock. Sophie Fillmore—Ella still had not gotten used to Sophie’s married name—answered the door, one hand on her swollen belly. “Ella! I thought it was you. Looks like the cold’s got you apple-cheeked.”
Ella could tell that her friends Sophie and Becky had started some time ago—by the smell of it, something with vinegar. Ella stuck her head in the door and tried to unsnarl the other smells wafting aloft.
“I figured we’d gravy some turnips, Ella,” Sophie said, foreguessing Miss Holland’s question. “Come on in! Becky got pulled away to dress a couple chickens, but she’ll be back to pickle some hogs’ feet with us soon. We’ve been waitin’.”
As if in answer, the cantankerous rumbling of Becky’s mother thundered in through the open kitchen window from the slaughterhouse, followed by the daughter’s gainsaid whinging. Mrs. Brody was the sort of woman always heard before seen. Young Becky Brody insisted she must have been adopted, and some Tucker clansmen were apt to agree when comparing the twain.
“How’s Pappy getting along these days?” Sophie asked.
“I ain’t seen him today. He’s trying to cook up the smokeless powder again, and Pa don’t want me near Bill when he tries that.”
“He’s been after me and Victor for our sow’s dung, but I keep tellin’ him our hog could flow like a river and it wouldn’t be enough to suit him, as often as he comes over.”
“I don’t think it’s the manure he’s really after,” Ella murmured. Bill’s home had grown lonely and quiet in the year since Sophie had left.
Sophie leaned up against the sheet vinyl countertop, one fist on her waist. “Well doggone it, a girl’s gotta grow up sometime. My Victor wasn’t going to wait forever, and I was a-pushin’ seventeen myself. I got a family of my own to take care of now.” Her shoulders sagged a bit as she sighed. “But you get over there and make sure he uses the sulfuric acid fresh outta the ‘still. He gets careless with that stuff unless someone gets after him.”
Ella nodded. “It’s okay if you miss him, too. We ain’t more than a ten-minute hike across town…”
Becky entered the kitchen from the attached slaughterhouse clutching a bald, headless chicken by its legs. “Hey, Ella! Mighty good to see you again. What’re you all jawin’ about? Let’s get the gravy started.”
Ella motioned to the milk pail on the counter. “Only milk to add to it.” She set a cast-iron skillet on the wood-fired stove to get some heat.
“Gravy oughta have more animal fat in it than that,” Becky said, wrinkling her nose at the woeful lack of lard or tallow. “Did you hear my Pa’s been takin’ me shootin’? Says I could go on an unbred hunt sometime.”
Sophie shook her head. “That’s daddy-girl talk. You’re liable to get your face carved up, lookin’ for trouble like that.”
“Eh,” Becky waved Sophie’s concerns away. “I already got me a man who won’t care about a scar or two.”
Ella and Sophie looked at each other. Though ludicrously unaware of it, Becky Brody was deemed the handsomest, sweetest creature ever to grace this earth by all the eligible boys in the clan—about thirty of them. Boys who hadn’t seen her butcher a chicken.
Sophie crossed her arms over her belly. “Then why didn’t you go out rabbit huntin’ today, if you’re so keen to spit lead?”
Becky wrestled with the dead bird to crack a joint free of its socket. “It’s a Tuesday, Sophie. Gals before guys. The hammer on my gun’s busted anyhow. I half thought Ella’d bring it with her today. Pa left some pigman teeth to pay for it when it’s fixed.” Becky gestured to the jar of misshapen molars resting on the sill.
“The sear’s worn down. Amos is workin’ on it.” Ella answered. She flicked a droplet of water onto the cookstove, and, not seeing it sizzle, stoked the coals in the firebox and opened up the damper.
“Yeah?” Becky turned with renewed attention at the mention of young Mr. Taylor. “How’s that new apprentice workin’ out for your pa?”
“Fine.” Ella looked down at the skillet. It wasn’t hot enough yet to toast the flour, but she tossed some in anyway and stirred it into the trifling dollop of oil.
“Fiiiine?” Sophie asked, leaning forward to rest her chin on her hands, eyes wide.
“Pa’s got a skip in his step again,” Ella explained, still staring at the clumps of greasy flour in the skillet. “It’s not like he’s got his son back, but I haven’t seen Pa so lively since … you know. Amos has got the makin’s of a fine guncrank.”
“Uh huh.” Becky said.
Ella bit her lip and turned away from her tormentors. She dumped a measure of milk into the hot skillet, and savory heat swelled up to warm her face and mask the blush in her cheeks. “You’ll, uh, you’ll be due soon, won’t you, Sophie?”
“Don’t try to weasel out of it, Ella,” Sophie said, wagging a finger. “You’re older than me and Becky both. If you don’t start doing something soon, all the good men of the town’ll be taken and you’ll have to wait for a widower to show up. You won’t get another shot like Amos.” She sidled up to examine the gravy. “This is gonna thicken up too much. Hand me the milk.”
Now that they had unavoidably brooked the subject, Ella rolled her eyes toward Sophie as she passed the milk. “He’s been apprenticing for a month, and you’re already plannin’ my wedding.”
“Ella’s right,” Becky said. “I think it’s more romantic to wait longer.” Becky clutched a bloody scrap of meat to her breast. The sight was enough to set Ella giggling.
“Don’t encourage her, Becky. She’s being too picky.” Sophie stirred the gravy, tapped the wooden spoon against the side of the skillet, and left it to stew.
“I’m not picky; I figure most Tucker men would suit me fine.” Ella returned to the turnips, plucked one from the basin, and cut it into chunks.
“What’s the holdup, then?” Becky asked.
Ella shrugged. “It ain’t as easy as you’d reckon it.”
“Nonsense. You can get a man easy, but you’ve got to act like you enjoy the company. It’s all about how you present yourself.” Becky shook a severed wing at Ella for emphasis, bits of blood and fat flinging into the air. She ripped out the chicken’s heart, crop, and gizzard with a sickening squelch and set them aside before washing her hands in a basin by the back kitchen door.
“I just ain’t much at ease around young fellers.”
“Neither was Sophie, and she got over that pretty quick. Amos is pretty near livin’ in your house. You can put yourself at ease once you get used to a guy.” Becky examined the gravy, made a scrunched-up face, and tossed in a bit of flour to thicken it.
Ella cut a bad spot from a turnip. “Amos Taylor don’t seem like the kind of boy I could get used to.”
“What’s wrong with Amos?” Becky asked as if she’d been slapped.
“Nothing’s wrong with him,” Ella said, “except that he’s just a little … much for me. Like eating a whole pie by yourself.”
Becky stared, blinking once. “I could think of worse problems.”
Ella sighed. “We’ve … We’ve got a bunch of turnips here. Reckon we could make another casserole?”
“Don’t got any cream o’ mushroom,” Sophie said. She inspected the gravy and added some milk to thin it out. When she turned away, Becky added some flour.
“We can make some.”
“Don’t got mushrooms,” Becky said. “Ella, I’m telling you, if you just fix yourself up a little—”
“Want to try mashed turnip candy again?”
“That was the biggest waste of sugar I ever did see,” Sophie said, adding some milk to the gravy. “And I’d eat anything.”
“Well, then I’m about out of ideas.” With the back of her hand, Ella wiped away the damp collecting on her forehead. “We’re not going to make a cattle trough of gravy for all these turnips, are we?”
“I dunno, looks like we’re most of the way there,” Becky said as she added more flour to the gravy.
Sophie fetched a couple jars to pickle the hogs’ feet. “Ella,” she said, “we don’t mean to tease you so much about Amos. We just don’t want you to miss a good thing when it … What the heck? Why is this gravy so thick?”
By mid-morning, out in the southwest woods, Amos and his eleven-year-old brother had split off from the rest of the hunters to chase down a rabbit trail. A mere ten minutes of fruitless wandering set Dale Taylor to whining. The kid had the irksome bent of wagering little and quitting early. “Harvey’s already got enough rabbits to feed our whole family, Amos. Let’s go back.”
“What about the powdermaker and Master Holland, huh? They don’t got no one hunting for them. Let’s keep going.” Amos was not about to give in to his younger brother’s griping.
“Aw, come on, Amos,” Dale moaned. “My feet are gettin’ cold.”
Amos crouched to peer through the thickets up ahead. “Shut up, Dale.”
“Why couldn’t we bring Burpy with us? Nigel Bunton brought his dogs.”
Amos turned on one knee. “I said shut up, Dale! I swear, you want to scare off every rabbit between here and Gooseneck Run?”
“Yes. I want to go back.”
Amos pushed his younger brother face-first into the snow in disgust.
“Hey!”
Amos pushed himself to his feet off of his brother’s back. “Keep bellyachin’ about the cold, and I’ll freeze your nose off, you lowdown wimp.”
That shut Dale up long enough for them to make some headway. They crossed the wide spaces of old-growth forest unclogged with brush to examine patches of wild newer growth. Places that had once been a solitary driveway or trailer park were now, fifty years later, islands of viciously competing flora, shot through with thorny vines and poison ivy. The young trees sprouting up from them could not yet strangle out the riffraff and restore order to the forest floor. Nasty stuff to climb through, but perfect for finding small game, had game not been so scarce.
They came up over a crest in the woods and stopped at a steep embankment. Snow piled up in a round pillow, softening the landscape and hiding the edge of the drop-off, perfect for out-jacking an ankle if they weren’t careful. They inched up to the edge when a movement in the mist between the naked trees caught their eye. Something rustled through the brush about three stones’ throws off. Dale raised his musket.
“Stop, don’t cut down at it,” Amos murmured, “Could be one of ours.”
The form slipped down the embankment about twenty feet and flitted out of their sight. Bigger than a rabbit. Could have been a deer. Amos and Dale crept toward where they last saw movement. They reached a small rock outcropping and sensed more turbulent movement directly beneath them, the shuffling of many bodies in the snow.
It could have been a herd of deer, Amos thought, but there would need to be at least twenty of them rooting around to make that much noise. He was about to peer over the edge of the snowy embankment when a low grunt rose from below. Not quite animal, not quite human.
A spasm of silent terror seized him. He didn’t need a peek to see what took shelter under the outcropping. The image of their father’s hand, shredded to a mess of bone and tendon, flashed through Amos’ mind. He knew that grunt. Pigmen.
They inched backwards on their hands and knees, still unseen. No breeze to put them upwind of the beasts, but they were close enough that their nervous sweat would betray them soon. Some feet back from the edge of the embankment, they rose to a low crouch and picked their wary way back into the woods, back up the hill quick and quiet as field mice.
They made it about fifty feet before a hungry growl whirled the two brothers in their own tracks, and they knew they were in it. Dark shapes came forth from between the misty trees, giving chase to the hunters. Dale brought his rifle to bear and fired a wild shot that sent shrieks through the writhing brush.
“Don’t shoot! Gotta leg it,” Amos cried.
They ran, their deerskin-clad legs flinging snow into the air behind them. Behind, the shadowing figures multiplied and drew closer. Amos found his panic whistle and gave a harmsway call to warn the other hunters. The two brothers could try to climb some trees, but this many pigmen could get at them faster than they could climb.
Amos tripped over a fallen branch buried in the snow and knew he was finished. Frantic movement teased the corner of his eye as he turned to face the guttural pants. His hand went to his knife. A set of fangs flashed but never struck home.
Instead Amos glimpsed the blur of a skittering withdraw and heard a squeal of pain. Without giving a further thought to his wondrous salvation, he scrambled to his feet and gave chase to his brother. A short escarpment rose ahead. He pitched Dale on up with a shoulder to the rump and then vaulted after him. A hard, sinewy grip caught his foot before he had gained the edge, pulling him back down.
He dug his gloved hands into the dirt and rock for purchase and strained against the willful strength of the creature below. He heard the growling pants of other pigmen converging, all coming to eat him alive. He heard Dale cry out his name from above, helpless.
“Run, Dale!” Amos cried. “Get outta—”
A bow twanged from the top of the escarpment, and the savage grip on his leg unclenched with an animal howl of agony and rage. Bind-free, Amos clambered to the edge of the ridge, where he found a hand reaching down to help him up.
The other hunters, he thought. Thank God. But once on his feet, he beheld not his fellow clansmen, but a dark-haired young stranger with sunken eyes and a prickly face, still holding a strung bow in one hand.
“Hurry,” the stranger panted, “‘Afore they get to the top.”
The party of three sprinted through the woods, Amos still blowing shrill warnings on his whistle. He cupped his hand around the whistle and echoed a call off of a sheer cliff face on the other side of the vale. A few steps later they heard a return call from the top of the hill, perhaps three hundred paces off. The rest of the hunting party weren’t far away, if the three could only reach them.
“This way!” Amos cried, already churning through the snow. “Follow me!”
They pelted up the slope, through the lonely wooden pillars of the mountain forest, the sounds of the chase behind them and the sounds of rescue ahead of them. Amos and Dale both called to the other hunters who ran down to meet them. Amos’s older brother, Harvey, was among the rescuers.
“What it be, Amos?” Harvey called.
“Ready the rifles! Pigmen! Some twenty of ’em at least!”
“Muskets to bear!” one of the older hunters shouted. “Pigmen down yonder! Cut down at ’em!”
With eight able arms on the scene, the hunters leveled their weapons at the hunched beasts just entering their line of fire.
“Wai’fer a clean shot, they’re a-movin’!” someone shouted.
Amos risked a glance at the stranger; never seen his face before. He’d dropped in on them like a stone from the black. The stranger took his stand with the Tuckers, having already nocked an arrow and drawn his bow with a hand quaking from fear or waning strength. The other hunters pulled back the flint locks on their muskets. Amos saw a clear shot about fifty paces off and fired. The smoke masked the trueness of his shot, but he didn’t bother to check as he backed up, reloading. Others opened fire, powdering the snow with black soot, backing away while reloading to keep up the stretch between them and the pigmen and to get clear of the clouded gunsmoke. The war cries of the oncoming beasts gave way to the din of wounded yelps and howls. Amos struggled to slip the ramrod into the quivering barrel of his rifle and stuff it down through the smoky fouling caked into the grooves inside.
The pigmen, with their ape-like, not-quite bipedal gait, crossed the close-fighting line before any of the Tuckers could finish their reloads, and a chorus of knives, swords, and matchets slid from their sheathes as other clansmen lowered their short spears. The pigmen were almost upon the hunters when a thunderous volley of gunfire took the charging unbreds in the flank, scattering them like pitching pins. Another group of Tucker hunters had arrived to answer the harmsway call. The creatures fled, leaving behind their dead and dying.
The assembled hunters blew on their whistles to warn any other hunters out there of the hunt’s end. One of the young clansmen ran to the fallen pigmen with a drawn knife.
“What are you doing?” the eldest of the Brody boys demanded of the young clansman.
“The teeth. We can’t just leave them—”
“Can’t spend ’em if you’re dead. We gotta get the heck out of here before more come.”
The hunters took a head count before the sirens of eerie howls moaning through the woods sent them to their heels again. A throaty pigman call answered another call across the vale, and then another farther off. This wasn’t a lone pack.
They made the mile or so hike back in less than ten minutes, forward runners mounting horses to warn the outlying farms. All through the woods, platoons of pigmen wriggled out of the brush like worms driven above ground by a heavy rain. The town had readied before the last hunters made it to the gates, and within twenty minutes every man waited by his home, armed for taking teeth. Here and there the pop and crack of firearms at the wall told of skirmishes that stopped the pigman onrush and kept the unbred line well within the forest bight west of town.
Amos Taylor was one of the last hunters through the gate. The mysterious young stranger had needed a shoulder to lean on, and once safe within the clan walls, nearly collapsed from exhaustion.
This is a fantastic survival story set in a post-apocalyptic America. Our setting is a few generations after the fall of society from the Tucker clans point of view.
Warreners world-building and storytelling was excellently executed along with being well paced – within a few pages I understood the dangers the clan faced, the currency used and type of society the clan lived in. The depictions of hunger, a yearning for the world that was before and clan mentality were particularly well done, with the overall theme of what it means to be human, control and consequences of development woven throughout.
The twist was excellent leaving the book with a satisfying ending while still setting up for more to come.
There was a very well done religious subplot of this with links to Revelation and Jonah in the Bible and how it was used as a form of ‘protection’ for the clan. The literary side of the book was also great, quite like a Black Mirror episode, showing how society can turn out based on scientific developments.
Things to bear in mind; this is a slower/steady paced book about survival, not void of action but not totally action packed either. Also the characters talk with Appalachian English which may be difficult to understand at times if you are not familiar.
Some cons; I found it hard to picture some characters as some were just named rather than described. It took me a while to gauge who was who as I was reading.
Another was the depiction of women in the book. Women are not elders or watchers for the clan and are only used in fighting if needed. I didn’t find this was realistic if the population of the clan is so small. However, I don’t think Warrener is misogynistic in any way, rather this was intentionally added as there is a commentary here of how society reverted back to pre-feminist times. However, this made the book uncomfortable to read in places and felt out dated which better execution may have avoided.
Overall, I very much enjoyed reading this despite war/battle scenes not being my thing and I am very much looking forward to the sequel.
I would recommend this for any fans of Game of Thrones, Ready Player One, Klara and the Sun and The Walking Dead.
Trigger warnings: violence (war/battle scenes and domestic violence alluded to), attempted rape.