Behind the house, the mountain continues to climb. There are a few dirt roads up there certainly accessible to the hunter’s vehicle. They also have the advantage of being high ground to watch from, and a good area around the house is cleared of trees. If I wanted to see if there were anything interesting at Emily and Ivy’s home, that is exactly where I would set up.
However, Emily and I have had this discussion as well. She keeps game cameras up there along the trails, and a few other kinds of surprises. On the other hand, I am looking for evidence of a very skilled hunter. It is best for me to assume that she would assume any ideal vantage point is itself watched. As I let myself float up one of the trails, I keep a careful eye out for any recent disturbances, and also let myself listen to the memories of the land. That is when I realize it may not have been such a big mistake to approach the hunter the other day while she fixed her motorcycle tire. Yes, she has now seen my face and car, but I also have a sense of her. A sense that lets me pick up the echoes of her passage along the trail, even though she was extremely fastidious about leaving no physical trace.
I follow those echoes, and find where she had stopped to look down on the house. I can sense a pair of optical and infrared binoculars, and frustration. From that, I can guess that she did not find the house until both Ivy and Emily had left town, and the hunter has not been back since.
Chapter Seventeen
Carl Wilson
My phone rings. It’s Grandma.
“Carl,” she says, sounding rushed. “Can you get out of town without being followed?”
“You know I can.”
“Good. Three o’clock at the Hurley’s off the interstate.”
I check the time. It’s after noon, and a good two-hour drive. “I’ll be there,” I say.
“You catch any sign you’re being followed, make a big loop back home instead. If I don’t see you at three, I’ll assume that’s what happened.”
I don’t waste any time getting on the road, because I’m not planning on taking a very direct route. I keep an eye on my mirrors as I make sudden turns off the highway onto long, empty roads, and once even make a U-turn. Anybody trailing me would need to be really good to keep on my tail without me noticing them back there. I still manage to pull into the truck stop about ten minutes before three, and go into the restaurant.
Grandma gets there five minutes later, and we grab a booth in the corner. We keep the conversation light until the server takes our order, then she leans across the table. “There’s at least one Negre in Stoker’s Mill,” she says.
“Two, kind of. I’ve figured out that Ben is renegade from them.” I tell her about what happened yesterday, when I caught the scent of one zombie that had been sniffing around my car while I checked out Ben’s place, and then my conversation with Ben a little bit later, where he told me I was both in danger myself, and a possible risk to Ivy.
“I didn’t know that Ben was former Negre,” Grandma says. “Doesn’t seem the type. But I know they’re after Ivy.” She tells me to keep calm and collected. All that fuss makes it clear what she wants to tell me next. I know that Ben had his eyes on Ivy, so I’m not happy, but also not surprised to hear that she snuck out last night and had spent the night with him. What I am not expecting is to hear that shortly after she’d gotten home this morning, she and Grandma had gotten into a fight, and she snuck out of the house again a few minutes later. Then there was a call, just telling her to get out of town for a few days because of something to do with the Negre.
“Did she at least look…” I struggle to figure out the right way to ask what I want to ask.
“You know he couldn’t have taken her against her will,” Grandma says.
“He could have certainly nudged it quite a bit, though.”
“I’ve been keeping a very careful eye on that. Everything I could tell was that it was something she genuinely wanted.”
I take a drink of coffee after hearing that. Now that she has truly fallen in love with another, any future she and I have as a couple has ceased to exist. I had been prepared for it since our fight the other day, but it still hurts to know she has given herself completely over to Ben.
“I know it’s hard for you to hear, Carl, but I think it’s better you know now.”
I nod my head.
“I need you to do some things, Carl. You’re not going to like them, but they are very important for Ivy’s survival.”
“Yeah,” I say, distracted by a sudden and intense sense of loneliness.
“Don’t go looking for her. If Ben has sensed that the Negre will get to you through her, you need to stay far away. You understand?”
“I do.” I don’t completely trust that Ben was telling me the truth about his sense, but Grandma is willing to believe it. That’s enough for me.
“You also need to stay away from the house for a few days. You’ll need to run some interference with her friends. People need to believe that she and Ben have run off somewhere. You’ll need to lie to them and get them to believe that you think everything is alright.”
“Is everything alright?” I ask.
“No. If the Negre are looking for her, the worst I’ve feared for her has come to pass. They want something from her, and we need to get them hunting for her anywhere but around here.”
“Are you saying they’re close?”
Grandma gives me a real hard look, as if she’s about to knock me right out of the booth. “Don’t go hunting for them,” she says. “You go on their trail, the Negre will find them. Tell me you understand this, Carl.”
I can’t answer that right away. Even though she’s willing to cut Ben some slack now, I won’t. I still cannot stand the thought of that dead thing touching Ivy, of the risk he’s exposed her to by coming to Stokers Mill and seducing her.
“Tell me you understand me, Carl,” Grandma says again.
“I understand,” I say. But I don’t like it.
“Good,” she says, just as the server brings our food.
*****
It is about eight at night when I get the first call. It’s Kate.
“Hey, Carl,” she says. Carl, not Graylock. She’s worried.
“Hello.”
“I know you might be the last person who’d know, but is there any chance that you’ve heard anything from Ivy? We were supposed to study last night, but she never showed, and we haven’t heard from her all day. Theresa went by her house to drop something off, and said that she and her grandmother were both gone. Is everything alright?”
It hurts me to lie to Kate, but I say, “I have no idea. She hasn’t told me anything. Was Grandma’s truck still at the house?”
“I think Theresa said both the truck and Ivy’s car were both there.”
“She’s probably off with Grandma for something, then. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“It’s not like her to blow Nathan and me off, Carl, and to just vanish for a full day without saying anything to us.”
“Well, you know she’s not talking to me,” I say, reminding her that I told her how Ivy had thrown me out of her life. “So I can’t tell you where she is.”
“I know,” Kate says. “But you’re still close to her grandmother, right? If something really important came up, she’d tell you, wouldn’t she?”
“Probably,” I say. “I haven’t heard anything from her, though. If they’re both going to be away for long, she should give me a call to check in on the house while they’re gone.”
“Please tell me if you hear anything, Ok?” Kate asks.
“I will.”
*****
It’s such a beautiful morning that I don’t even glance toward my car as I leave the house. I take my time walking down the valley to school, carefully picking my way around a few slippery spots from some rain that fell yesterday.
Kate and Nathan are sitting out in their usual place on the front steps.
“Sit,” Kate says, patting a spot next to her. As I sit down next to her, I notice h
er giving me a little smile.
“You heard anything?” Nathan asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Grandma called me this morning, said she heard from Ivy last night.”
“Oh my God!” Kate says. “Where is she?”
“Apparently, she and Ben got stupid and decided to run off to Denver over the weekend and are just hanging out there.”
“How stupid?” Kate asks. I can tell by the look on her face she’s asking the question I don’t want to answer.
“I highly doubt she’s shared those kinds of details with her grandma. She did say Ivy at least sounds like she’s doing well, seems happy,” I say.
“Oh… That’s what you meant by getting stupid,” Kate says to Nathan. “I can’t believe she’s doing that with Ben.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I say. I really hope they’ll change the subject soon.
“It’s a pretty safe bet,” Kate says.
“Do you want to run off with Steve, now that you two are…” Nathan asks her.
“Steve’s not really happening anymore,” Kate says.
This is definitely news to me. He hadn’t said anything at work when I saw him yesterday.
“But if he was?” Nathan asks.
“I don’t know,” Kate says. “If it were good, I’d totally blow off a week of school for it.” She leans just a little bit to the side and bumps me with her shoulder. She looks at me, and suddenly I see the playful tease leave her face. “I’m sorry, Carl.”
I try to shrug it off as no big deal, but neither of them is buying. We sit in awkward silence for a minute, before Kate finally breaks it. “Hey. Tonight, how about the three of us catch a movie? Take our mind off of things.”
“I’d like that,” I say.
The first bell rings, and we all head inside. I swear, all day long every third person asks if I know where Ivy is. Now that I’ve planted the story with Kate and Nathan, I have to swallow my hurt and keep telling people that apparently, she and Ben have thrown all responsibility to the wind and are off on some trip together.
Ever since that day that I got up in his face about freaking Ivy out on the road, people have assumed he and I are arch-rivals, so they struggle to find the right thing to say to me. That is even worse than me having to admit over and over again that they’re together. Despite the bad blood between Ben and I over Ivy, I find myself wrestling with the last conversation he and I had together. When he warned me that I was a danger to Ivy unless I backed way off, I think I also saw some concern for my safety there as well.
One thing that I really must credit Ben for is that he genuinely seems to respect the Truce that ended the Great War, and he’s never approached me with any sort of hostility. Sure, he’s pushed back when I’ve pushed at him, but he’s never started it with me. Whenever I look at him, I see somebody with old eyes that have seen too much. If I can set aside my jealousy that in just a few short months he’s captured Ivy’s heart in a way that I couldn’t over many years, he seems like he’s actually a decent person.
I wonder how we would have gotten along if we’d ever met without Ivy in the middle. For as long as we and the zombies have been at war, we have always shared the burden of our secrets. We all carry the burden of having to keep a huge part of ourselves hidden from people we grow to care about. We all can let our power go to our heads, and use the people around us if we’re not careful.
After school, I join Kate and Nathan for a trip over to Grand Lake to catch a movie. Pretty standard action movie, but it was that, a horror flick, or a romcom. They aren’t much into scary movies, and a movie where the right boy lands the girl isn’t quite the mood we’re looking for. Kate sits between Nathan and me. She spends the whole show alternating between leaning right to have a whispered conversation with Nathan, and leaning left, just close enough to touch her shoulder to my arm. Halfway through the movie, I realize that we’re playing the armrest game, neither of us quite willing to claim it.
If I weren’t so worried about Ivy, I’d put my arm on the armrest, moving into that shared space between us. In the close confines, even above the smell of popcorn and nachos and stale, spilled soda, I can still catch Kate’s scent, and she’s definitely broadcasting attraction. It’s something about the skin around the neck and on the wrists that changes when a woman feels a certain kind of desire. It’s no accident that pinkies put perfume precisely on those places.
It’s just not the time to pursue that with her. Not while so much of my mind and, honestly, my heart, are still occupied by somebody else. I truly appreciate the way her feelings for me have changed, but it’s not anything I can act on right now. Fortunately, I’ve never lost the first impression the students at Stokers Mill had of me, as somebody awkward and kind of clueless. So as long as Kate doesn’t come right out and say it, or plant a kiss on me, or just start unbuttoning her blouse or anything, I think I can play the ignorant card at her advances until I am in a place where I can let myself think of her that way.
After the film ends and we’re walking out to Kate’s car, she says, “We’re only two hours from downtown Denver. What say we go find Ivy and haul her home?”
“If only we knew exactly where in Denver she is,” I say.
“Come on,” Kate says. “You could sniff her out, couldn’t you?”
“Sorry. We didn’t bring any of her clothes or anything for me to bloodhound off of,” I say.
Kate and Nathan laugh a little bit at that, but it’s forced. I can tell they’re still terribly worried. IQ Ivy missing school. Careful, cautious Ivy, who’s always guarded her heart, going gaga for some weird guy and literally skipping town with him. Ivy, the most considerate and loyal friend anybody in Stokers Mill has ever known blew off an evening studying with her best friends, and hasn’t been in touch at all in the three days since. It is so unlike her.
“Maybe Ben’s got some sort of mind control or hypnosis on her,” Nathan says, and I notice him watching me curiously.
I don’t say anything. I don’t know what Nathan’s interest in my response is. Even though I must agree with Grandma that I don’t think it’s likely that Ben has used his zombie charm on her, I say nothing. Too much risk of accidentally saying something that would reveal way too much. Still, the comment gets me taking another look at how Ivy has been lately. If Ben had been using it slowly to seduce her over time, I would have picked up on it. One of the first things you learn as a zombie hunter is how to tell pinkies that have been charmed by them. It’s in the eyes, in the voice when they’re under the control of a vampire. Grandma also knows a good deal about the zombies, and she’s known Ivy all of her life. If she thought she were under Ben’s control, we would be planning on how to find her and get her back – regardless of whether the Negre are after her for something. Grandma wouldn’t let her be dominated by a zombie that way. If it were necessary to rescue her from Ben, she’d do it.
I still have this nagging doubt that Ivy is well, though. I’d like to believe that Grandma would never lie to me, but if she were in the kind of danger that put her in the path of a Negre, would Grandma send me off so there’d be no way I could be accused of breaking the Truce. I’ve been replaying our conversation at the truck stop, how she made me promise not to look for her, lest I cross the path with one of the Negre. I am almost certain that she believes Ben is genuinely acting with Ivy’s best interests at heart, and that Ben is also being truthful that the Negre would be able to find her through me. Almost certain that Ben is above board, almost certain that Grandma is being straight with me.
I realize that I need to get away from Kate and Nathan and their speculation about where Ivy is and Ben’s motivations. Hearing other people voice the same concerns I have nagging at the back of my mind only makes them louder. I’m almost positive that she’s well. The wolf inside does not like ‘almost’. The wolf is a being that does not live in shadows and fuzzy gray areas and uncertainty. The wolf wants to know for sure, so it can act, not ponder and speculate and fret. My love for Iv
y keeps feeding the wolf’s need for certainty. It’s becoming harder and harder for me to keep him leashed.
“Look,” I say. “We should really get ourselves back home. I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got a big lit test tomorrow that I’m not as prepared for as I’d like to be.”
“Yeah,” Kate says. “We were supposed to be studying for our Advanced Chem test with Ivy again tonight.”
“I can’t believe she’s letting that stupid boy make her fail the test,” Kate says.
“Grandma will cover for her,” I say. “She’ll probably tell the school it was a family emergency that came up and she’ll be able to retake it when she gets back.”
“If she gets back,” Nathan says.
“She will,” I say. “She’s too smart to do something permanently stupid.”
“I hope so,” Kate says. “But Graylock is right. We should head back.”
The road back to Stokers Mill is always dark. Going up through the forested mountains, the trees and the steep slopes block out so many of the stars and often even the moon. Not many people have houses there, the ground being too steep to easily build on. The few homes that are there are set back far enough from the road that their porch and yard lights are hidden from view. Sitting in the back seat, without the lights of the dashboard to ruin it, my night vision is strong and I’m letting the wolf out just a little bit, letting him seek out prey in the woods. He sees a few deer cautiously walking parallel to the highway, a couple of owls on the wing silently gliding from the branches to drop on some small rodent or another.
Then it sees something walking on two legs, coming up to the highway from below. I track it as we go past. Kate is smart enough to drive carefully on these twisty roads at night, so I get a good, long look at it as we pass. The wolf has wanted to sink its teeth into Ben for a long time, has studied him through my eyes… I don’t need to see his face. I can tell by the way he’s walking who I’m seeing.
“You Ok, Carl?” Kate asks from the front seat, breaking me out of my thoughts.
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