A short distance ahead in that too-rough-to-harvest rocky area, a copse of cottonwoods grew where the ground dropped down in a natural drainage. They’d probably been planted as a windbreak because we weren’t near enough to the Columbia River for the growth to be natural. By my reckoning, the source of the things I smelled seemed to be coming from the same general area.

Tony and the man had quit arguing to follow me.

“Where are you going, Mercy?” Tony called.

“Something smells bad over here,” I told him. Blood and feces is bad, right?

I left the tilled ground and broke through the edging ring of opportunistic alfalfa into cheatgrass that released spiky-painful seedpods into my tennis shoes and socks as soon as I’d traveled about two steps. I followed the too-sweet, unmistakable scent of freshly opened organs and blood to a small clearing under the trees—and stopped, appalled.

“Holy shit,” the stranger who knew me said in reverent tones. Then he shouted one of those words that don’t mean anything except “pay attention” and “come” and are designed to carry over battlefields.

This was not a battlefield, or even the remains of a battlefield. It was the remains of a slaughter.

Bodies, blood, and pieces were scattered here and there and mixed, so it took me a moment to parse exactly what I saw. I finally decided to go with heads, because heads are difficult to eat, and the charnel-house mess was definitely missing parts and maybe whole bodies. Five … no, six people, all women, two dogs—a German shepherd and something small and mixed-breed—a horse, and some other big animal whose head was either missing or might have been under something.

I have a strong stomach—I hunt rabbits, mice, and small birds while wearing my coyote skin, and I eat them raw. Before this, I would have said that lots of things make me squeamish, but fresh bodies not so much. This was so far beyond anything I’d ever seen that I flinched, looked away, then turned back to stare because part of me was sure that it couldn’t have been as bad as I first thought. It was worse.

Had someone in the pack done this? Or rather, given the volume of meat eaten, had several someones in the pack done this?

“These haven’t been here long,” I said into the silence behind me because I had to say something, do something. “Probably only since yesterday. It’s only spring, but even so, something would have started rotting in a day or so, and I don’t smell much putrefaction.”

I took a step forward to see better, and Tony grabbed my arm.