Jabberwock (en Inglés) - Ninie Hammon

June 1995. A storm crosses Nower County, Kentucky in the middle of the night. No thunder. No rain. Just a wind that wails like children crying, and then nothing at all.

By morning the county is sealed. Anyone who tries to drive across the county the line comes to on the asphalt outside the Dollar General, vomiting, blood running from their nose, their car gone and the last twenty minutes gone with it. Calls inside Nower County go through fine. Calls out die on the line. No mail comes. No deliveries.

No help.

The locals name the thing on the county line after the monster in the poem. The Jabberwock.

Charlie McClintock came home to bury her mother and empty her house. Sam Sheridan is the only nurse in a county with no hospital. Malachi Tackett came back from the war carrying something he cannot remember. They have not stood in the same room since high school, and they are what Nower County has instead of a government, a doctor, or the law.

Then a mother rides the Jabberwock three times trying to reach her baby in a hospital she can no longer get to. She comes back broken. She comes back certain it spoke to her. And she comes back knowing whose fault this is.

Charlie's.

The mother has a rifle. She has Charlie's three-year-old daughter. And she has somewhere to put her.

Book one of Nowhere USA, a complete seven-book series. This one ends without explaining the Jabberwock. The residents of Nower County have six more books to find out.