Read In Constant Fear for Free Online Page B

we’d traded a lot of the better stuff with those in the next valley. But there was very little left, and gradually we’d become more and more reliant on trading Jimmy’s know-how or my muscle for food. For sure a little fresh meat of our own wouldn’t go amiss. Mind you, I had to wonder, once we saw what we’d caught, would we actually want to eat it?
    In the end we agreed Jimmy would make up some traps and Lena, Gordie and me would go and set them in the woods. Hanna still wasn’t happy about it—bad enough hunting animals, let alone trapping them, when that often resulted in a long and painful death—and when Gordie asked her to come along, she refused. Which, of course, meant Gigi immediately said she’d come.
    Jimmy was as good as his word, and later that morning emerged from the barn with not just one but two types of trap: a simple snare to catch smaller animals—which Hanna got so upset about I said we didn’t need—and several examples of what looked like good old-fashioned bear traps.
    As ever, the little guy made a real production of explaining them to us, insisting we showed him that we understood how they worked and that we could set them correctly, and when I tried to make light of it, warned me that was how people lost limbs. Finally, when each of us had satisfied him that we really did understand, he left us to it, scuttling back to his workshop as if there was something there much more suited to his talents.
    The four of us made our way over to the woods, the daylight still embarrassing me, the way everything looked so peaceful and unthreatening. But the moment we crossed the tree line, you could feel the mood change: it was cooler, darker, the trees so dense in places anyone or anything could’ve been hiding in there.
    We didn’t set the traps right away, just took a general look around for anything that didn’t feel right. Lena was stopping every now and then, sniffing the air, this slightly concerned look growing on her face.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked.
    She shook her head, like she was getting a bit of an idea but wasn’t yet ready to share it.
    We went deeper into the woods, still not seeing anything unusual, taking the gentle slope down toward the road, then suddenly Lena picked up speed and I realized she was leading us somewhere.
    “What is it?” I asked, and again she didn’t reply, but I knew she was onto something, calling on those specially honed senses of hers, negotiating her way by sound and smell.
    At first I wasn’t sure what it was. I could see something up ahead, strewn out across the forest floor, and even though my instincts told me it was bad, it took me a while to work out exactly how. As we got nearer I could see there were four of them, blackened and burned, each one so twisted and contorted by death I couldn’t even make out what sorta animals they were.
    “What is it?” Lena asked, stopping along with the rest of us, though the smell was so strong, she must’ve had a pretty good idea.
    “Four burned animals,” I told her, moving forward to take a better look, the kids following but looking distinctly queasy.
    At first I thought they were all the same animal—all those sets of razor-sharp teeth, they had to be wolves, maybe the same ones Nick had seen—but then I realized that the one partly hidden under the others was something else, possibly a deer.
    “All burned?” Lena asked.
    It was the way she said it that made me stop and think, consider what I’d seen—what I should’ve seen right away.
    “Jeez,” I groaned, bending over the charcoaled bodies, studying them, but sure enough, with the possible exception of the deer, which I couldn’t see clearly unless I extracted it from the pile of carcasses, they were all burned the way George’s dog had been. “It’s the same thing: burned from the inside out.”
    “Same as Sandy?” Gordie asked.
    “Yeah,” Gigi sneered, like it was surely obvious to anyone with a brain.
    By the look of