He jogged up the road, eyes scanning the encroaching forest on both sides, ears throbbing in search of sound. A half moon rose over the river behind him. Another howl rose somewhere off to his left, farther away. Jace sighed with relief.
Until it was answered by another on his immediate right, less than a hundred yards away.
He may have said a bad word before he started running.
Yet he still couldn’t quite believe it. It had to be the other boys messing with him.
He ran and ran, but he had no idea which direction the camp lay. Everything looked different at night. The trees and winding road was unfamiliar.
Another howl, closer now, paralleling him.
His lungs burned, his legs weakened from the steepness of the winding roads.
The glowing band of fading dusk in the west seemed to make everything darker.
There was a familiar tree, right there at that fork in the road. He had noticed that particular twisted branch on the way in. The certainty of it lent speed to his pelting sneakers. He stretched out and ran, knowing that the van had to be just beyond the next ridge, the next curve.
Something hurtled out of the foliage toward him, seized his shoulder with razors, and slammed him onto the asphalt path like a downed antelope. He flopped and rolled. Pain seared his shoulder.
Like a rabbit clipped by mountain lion, Jace scrambled to his feet, but he couldn’t run. A low growl rooted him to the spot, and he faced the hulking shape stalking out of the shadows. Its eyes caught the moonlight with a yellow gleam. White fangs glistened in the dark.
What stalked toward him was an enormous black and silver wolf.
Jace’s breath came in rasps, every limb trembling, legs threatening to collapse under him. Blood pounded in his ears.
Its claws scraped the asphalt with each step. Its paws were the size of his hands.
Jace clenched his fists, preparing to go for the wolf’s eyes. “Get out of here!” He had faced down a pit bull once, gotten it to back off by yelling at it, roaring, waving his arms. He waved his arms and yelled. Fresh, warm blood soaked his T-shirt.
The wolf bared its teeth, as if it were...smiling.
Then it leaped. Two huge paws smacked him on the chest, and two hundred pounds of weight slammed him onto the asphalt. The back of his head smacked the pavement hard. A flood of rancid breath in his nose. Then blackness.
Jace awoke to the smell of bacon frying, campfire smoke, earth—and dried blood.
And a headache that pounded his skull with every heartbeat.
He was stretched out on a seat in the van. The van door admitted a cool morning breeze. Voices outside.
His shoulder ached.
How had he gotten here?
Running from something...
Eyes.
Fangs in the dark.
But here he was, all in one piece.
Was it a bad dream?
The guys outside were talking like everything was normal. Coach Slade was frying bacon and eggs in a cast-iron skillet over the campfire.
Jace was wearing a different shirt than last night.
Wasn’t he?
He levered himself into sitting position and cradled his forehead in both palms. A groan escaped him.
Coach Slade called, “’Morning, Jace. Ready for some breakfast?”
Jace’s mouth tasted like a mange-riddled opossum had nested in it. The brilliant morning sunlight pierced his eyes like needles. Licking his lips, he rubbed his face and eased himself out of the van. “Hey, ummm...”
The boys were sitting around the picnic table devouring slabs of bacon and heaps of scrambled eggs like their entire bodies were hollow. One of the coolers stood open next to Slade, half-full of steaks. It had been full the night before. Hadn’t it? Had he missed a day somehow?
He massaged the ache in his shoulder and tried to collect his thoughts. A sick feeling swirled in his gut, but he didn’t know why. Was it hunger?
Eric said, “You feel okay, buddy?”
Jace croaked, “No,” and told them about the opossum.
“You drink coffee?” Slade said.
“Couldn’t taste any worse,” Jace said.
Slade took an enameled coffee pot from the firepit and poured cloudy, black liquid into a tin cup, handing it over.
Jace took it, sipped. “Why’s it taste like eggs?”
“Cowboy coffee. Eggs hold the grounds together.”
Jace shrugged and sipped again. It wasn’t bad, and even the bitterness was preferable to what he’d woken up with. How did he ask what had happened to his other shirt without sounding stupid? How did he ask about last night without sounding crazy? Slade put a plate full of bacon and eggs in front of him. They all acted like everything was perfectly normal, yet Jace couldn’t help feeling like he’d almost died. Somehow. Was he going crazy?
The sun was so bright. His skin crawled like he had fire ants all over him. His head throbbed, but the coffee seemed to be helping that.
The boys talked about everything they wanted to do this week. Fishing, hiking, eating those steaks. The general sentiment was that they were all tickled to death to be outdoors, away from the everyday confines of St. Sebastians.
“That all sounds great, men,” Slade said, “but first, training.”
A collective groan.
“Three-mile run to warm-up, some P.T., then you’re free to goof-off for the rest of the day. Just stay out of trouble.”
It all sounded so normal. But how could it be? Something strange and terrible had happened to Jace, but he didn’t know what. How could he tell them?
He slipped his hand through his shirt collar to rub the bare flesh of his shoulder, plagued by a strange itchy-ache. His fingers slid over a series of scabbed lacerations stretching from his collarbone to his shoulder blade. They didn’t hurt, but... how?
Slade said, “Everything okay, Jace?”
“Yeah, I guess so... Well... Did anything weird happen last night?”
“Like what?” Eric said.
Caleb snickered.
“I dunno. I... can’t remember.”
The boys all traded glances.
Juan said, “You been getting into Coach’s scotch?”
Their laughter made Jace’s ears burn. “Never mind.”
Before long, Jace’s thoughts were pre-occupied with Slade’s grueling physical training regimen, a three-mile run around the park’s hiking trails, followed by an array of calisthenics.
“You wanna be on varsity, you gotta be fit!” he yelled at them.
Jace’s headache dissolved into burning lungs and aching muscles, but the effort rattled loose memories of a wolf’s howl in the dark, terrified flight, flashing teeth. But they felt like dreams, easy to ignore when a three-mile run through rugged forest paths sucked so profoundly.
While they paused for one of the Take-5s, Jace slid up nonchalantly next to Eric. “So, did you hear anything weird last night? A wolf howling maybe?”
Eric said, “Tons of coyotes around here.”
“So you didn’t?”
“There are no wolves in Nebraska.”
“I know that, but... never mind. Where did you guys go? Why did you ditch me?”
Eric seemed to be thinking his reply over carefully, and opened his mouth to speak.
Then Slade called, “All right, back at it! Line it up!”
After a lunch of burgers and hot dogs that somehow failed to satisfy Jace’s rumbling belly, a weariness like he’d never experienced crashed over him. Slade was good to his word. They were free to nap, goof-off, explore the park, whatever they liked. Slade lounged in a canvas chair with a book called What Darwin Never Knew.
Jace threw a blanket onto a patch of grass in the shade of a massive oak tree, lay down among a symphony of rich scents, and let sleep engulf him.
The next thing he knew, he was shivering in the chill of a clear evening, covered in sweat. Mourning doves traded calls in the trees. Crickets wriggled through grass. For a moment,
he thought he smelled the crickets. But that was crazy. He sat up and rubbed his face.
The campfire was a bed of Halloween-orange coals, but there was no one in sight.
“Hey! Where is everybody?” he called into the night, receiving no response.
He rubbed the gooseflesh up and down his arms. His skin felt super-sensitive, prickly.
His stomach rumbled like a badly tuned Harley, so he rolled up his blanket—strange that it was soaked with moisture in places—and approached the picnic table, looking for leftover food. What time was it? The moon hung high over the forest. He didn’t have a watch or a phone.
A plate of cold but grill-blackened hot dogs rested under another plate, and he fell upon them like a starving hound, not even bothering with the nearby buns and condiments. He belched but somehow didn’t feel satisfied. He lifted the lid on one of the coolers and found more raw beef and pork. A roast? How on earth was Slade going to cook a roast with a campfire? It sure looked good, though, until he remembered that it was raw, and he had no idea how to cook anything, much less with a campfire.
To drive back the pre-summer chill, he built the fire back up to a healthy blaze and warmed himself, losing time and awareness gazing into the flames. The moon rose higher.
In the distance, miles away, came a howl, answered by another.
Those were not coyotes calling.
But there weren’t any wolves in Nebraska, except in zoos. Then again, across the river lay Missouri, but he was pretty sure they didn’t have wolves either.
The sound wormed into the invisible foundations of memory, burrowing through stuff he could not grasp.
Where had everyone gone?
Why were the last couple of days so fuzzy in his memory? It sucked to look forward to camping trip for a whole week, and then when he got here, to feel like crap the whole time.
As if in response to the thought, cold sweat rose on the back of his neck. He edged closer to the fire, letting its heat grow uncomfortable on his legs, turning again and again like a rotisserie chicken.
He grew angry that everyone had taken off without him. He was a part of this trip, too, and everybody kept disappearing.
“Buttheads,” he muttered into the nocturnal quiet.
Jace waited up for Slade and the other boys as long as he could stay awake, but eventually he succumbed to sleep. He slipped into the van, locked every door, and stretched out on a seat. The night sent tremors of fear through him, but the locked interior of the van made him feel safer.
Dawn woke him, and he found himself still alone. He rolled open the van door with a feeling of terrible foreboding. Had something terrible happened to them all? Eaten by wolves? Or were they just screwing with him? That would be one of cruelest pranks ever.
But then he heard rhythmic footsteps coming down the road. Slade led the column of boys running in step. They ran up to the campsite, and Slade called a halt.
“Where have you guys been?” Jace asked.
“On a little early morning run,” Slade said. “We thought it better not to wake you, since you haven’t been feeling well.”
“I sure ain’t complaining about missing a run, but where have you been? I woke up last night and there was nobody here. Nobody. Creepy as hell—uh, heck.”
“You must have been dreaming or something. It was just a normal night,” Eric said.
“I waited for hours.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jace,” Slade said. “You fell asleep by the tree over there. The rest of us slept in the tent. You’ve been a little out of it.”
Jace rubbed his eyes. That all sounded wrong. He was awake. He knew his own senses. Didn’t he? What was happening to him?
“Come here,” Slade told him. He took Jace’s wrist with two callused fingers and counted the pulse on his watch. Then he laid a rough hand on Jace’s forehead. “No fever. Pulse is a little high. How do you feel?”
“Okay, I guess. A little tired.”
“Anything else?”
Jace wasn’t sure if he should mention the weird skin sensations or super-sensitive smell, so he didn’t. He didn’t want them to think he was some kind of wuss or what was the word—hypermaniac? Mega-khondriac? He shook his head “no.”
“Weird considering how much you’ve been sleeping,” Slade said.
“Why, how much is that? It was just a nap.”
The other boys sniggered.
Jace clenched his fists. “Why y’all laughing?”
“Dude,” Eric said. “You slept through two whole days.”
“Bullcrap,” Jace said.
“What day you think it is, bro?” DaShante said.
Jace did a little quick math. “Monday.”
“It’s Wednesday,” Eric said.
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“You guys are messing with me. Mr. Slade! Are they messing with me?”
His face impassive, unreadable, Slade pulled out his phone and showed him the date and time. It was indeed Wednesday.
Jace had lost two full days.
He sank to his haunches, gripping his skull. He wanted to go home. He wanted his own bed. He wanted to hear Lee and Malcolm bickering. But then—NO! He would not freak out. Nothing here was life threatening. It was just weird. And this was his coach. And his teammates. They might be jerks, but they wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him.
The next couple of days were normal enough that Jace could allow all the weirdness to slip to the back of his mind. They went kayaking on the river (awesome!). They tried to go horseback riding, but the horses wouldn’t stand still for them to mount, shying violently away, until their guide had to apologize and call off the ride (bummer!). So instead they all went zip-lining across a gorgeous tributary valley (again, awesome!). Of course, Slade wouldn’t let them have any fun without morning runs and training (again, bummer). It sucked every time, because Slade kept pushing them harder and harder, but Jace always came away feeling proud of himself. This week was making him stronger and faster. When they got back to St. Sebastian’s, he was going to show Docker a thing or two in practice.
By Saturday, he could almost forget the weirdness altogether—except for one thing. The other boys, even Slade, watched him with an intensity he didn’t understand. Did they think he was some kind of hopeless goofball now? What kind of stories would make it back to St. Sebastian’s?
On Saturday afternoon, they checked out a mountain man re-enactment festival in the center of the park. It was a little weird to see adult men and women dressing up in costumes of buckskin and gingham. There were black powder shooting competitions, tomahawk throwing demonstrations, archery, leather-making, blacksmithing, all kinds of skills from the olden days. Mingling with a crowd of spectators, men wore fox pelts and coon-skin hats, women bonnets and long dresses. The smells of cooking made Jace’s stomach roar, but none of the food looked familiar to him except pies and all sorts of mysterious fruit and berries in Mason jars. He didn’t see pizza anywhere, even though he knew better than to think the early trappers and settlers actually knew what pepperoni was.
Then he saw thick strips of meat hanging above a low, smoky fire. The luscious scent drew him like a starving dog. Jace suspected the guy tending the fire was a little plump for a mountain man, but he gave Jace a broad, bearded grin. “How do, young fella?”
“Pretty good. Say, are you making beef jerky?”
“Deer jerky. Shot it myself last fall with ol’ Clara here.” The man thumbed toward an antique-looking black powder rifle leaning against a wooden crate. “Hanker for a sample?”
“Sure!” His belly howled.
The man heard the noise and grinned wider, offering Jace a Mason jar full of jerky strips. “Go ’head, take a couple.”
Jace took two big pieces and took a big bite. His teeth didn’t penetrate. He might as well have been chewing on a chunk of spiced boot.
“Just suck on it for a while, soften it up,” the man said, chuckling. “Most of that stuff you find in
the store ain’t like the real article. Back then, all they had was salt and maybe pepper. Leave it too moist, and it just rots.”
As his saliva soaked and softened the meat, the taste erupted in his mouth like a firecracker. The meat was dried, but it was definitely not beef. It still had the wild in it. “Sir, this’s gotta be the most absolutely danged-edly awesome jerky I have ever had!”
The man laughed. “Glad to hear it.”
Jace was not lying. A shuddering pleasure went through him, not unlike when a nice-smelling girl walked by, but his was food.
The man took out a plastic bag labeled “ELK” and withdrew a handful of bloody-raw strips. At the sight of it, Jace’s stomach howled again.
“No breakfast, eh?” the man said.
“Sorry.”
More than anything now, he wanted one of those. But that was crazy.
Laying the strips onto a plate, the man took out a tin of seasoning and started to rub down the strips with powder mixture. The man noticed his fixation on the raw meat. “My own secret recipe.” Then he started talking about the things that mountain men usually ate, much of which didn’t sound appetizing at all, especially the bugs in the flour, and the half-rotten meat.
“Things were different then,” the man said. “Can’t cast much judgment on what a man’ll eat when he’s starving.”
Jace nodded. He knew that well. He’d never resorted to bugs though. The longest he’d ever gone without food was three days. Then Mom had finally brought home some groceries. “What if they couldn’t make a fire? If the wood was wet or something.”
“I reckon they’d eat raw meat if they had to.”
His stomach howled again.
“I like my steaks rare anyway. Raw’s not so much different.”
“Can I try it?” What did he just say?
The man shrugged. “Sure.” Then he pulled a knife as long as Jace’s forearm and sliced a morsel from one of the strips.
Jace took the cube of raw elk meat, a little bigger than his thumbnail, and felt its texture between his fingers. The smell of it wafted into his nose, and his stomach launched into a raging happy dance.
Fangs in the Dark Page 2
