Chapter Two
I slipped out of bed like a cat, not making the least bit of noise. Nana especially had very good ears, and she wasn’t far down the hall. I didn’t turn on the light or anything because I didn’t want to attract attention, and the moon was bright enough to see by anyway.
Once I made up my mind, there were some things I needed to do right away to get ready. I wasn’t sure exactly when the next full moon would be, but it couldn’t be more than three or four days off at the most. Tomorrow was Friday, and I was afraid it might come before I had another school day. Daddy had said “next week”, but that could mean Sunday for all I knew. My best bet was to get away while everybody thought I was at school, because then I’d have almost a whole day before anybody thought to look for me. That meant I needed to leave tomorrow, because Monday might be too late.
I tiptoed across the room and got my backpack from the floor beside my desk. Then I very quietly and carefully emptied all the books out, making sure to slide them ‘way far on the top shelf of the closet where maybe nobody would see them or think to look. I kept Robinson Crusoe with me though, so I’d have something to read. I bought it at the book fair at school a week ago and I was only about halfway finished with it.
For clothes, I gathered some jeans and t-shirts and other things and put them in the bottom of the backpack, making sure to roll them up as tight as I could so they wouldn’t take up as much room. I didn’t dare take all my clothes, you know; somebody might notice that. So I just took an extra pair of everything. That way I could wear one set while I washed the other.
I took my Swiss Army knife too, just in case. Whenever Robinson Crusoe got in a pickle, he always had to have tools and weapons and things, so I figured I’d better have something too. You never knew what you might run into. I didn’t think I’d get captured by cannibals or anything, but if I did then I wanted to be ready.
I also took my little radio and headphones that I got for Christmas last year, just for something to do. I couldn’t use it too much because it ate batteries like candy, but I thought it would be good to have it just in case.
Money would have helped a lot, but all I had was twenty-four dollars and ten cents. I’d been saving it up in a sock stuffed back behind everything in the top drawer of my desk, but I knew it wasn’t much. Mama and Daddy were too stingy to give me an allowance or anything, so I had to pick up cash whenever I got the chance, running errands and stuff like that.
If it had been just two weeks ago I would have had almost a hundred bucks from raking yards and stuff, but I spent most of that at the book fair. I wished I had it back, now. But Mama always said there’s no use crying over spilt milk, so I’d just have to make what I had last for as long as I could. Maybe I could rake some more leaves or mow grass or something like that if I had to.
There was also food to think about, and that was a tough one. There wasn’t much I could carry with me because it was so darned bulky. I didn’t mind drinking water all the time, but food was different. I knew a little bit about what you could eat and what was poisonous out in the woods, but I couldn’t live on acorn soup and dandelion salad all the time. I could catch fish, maybe, but that would get awfully old after awhile.
I was smart enough to know there might come a point when I’d be glad to have a fish, no matter how tired I was of them, so I took a box of hooks and a roll of fishing line from my tackle box and stuffed them in the backpack with my clothes. You don’t really need anything else in a pinch, cause you can always dig up worms and cut a cane pole most anywhere. You don’t even have to have a bobber, but if I wanted one I could use a little piece of dry wood.
That was about all I had in my own room that was worth taking, but there were still some other things I needed from the rest of the house.
For one thing, I needed some way to light a fire. I knew there was a box of lighters downstairs in the drawer next to the refrigerator, and I decided to take all of those. Lighting fires is a lot easier that way than if you try to do all that stuff with sparks and dry wood shavings. They taught us how to do that at Cub Scouts, and I thought it was silly even back then. I might be a country boy, but I wasn’t an idiot.
I slipped downstairs quiet as a mouse and got myself a glass of chocolate milk from the refrigerator. That way if anybody heard me and came to see what I was doing, I had a good excuse for being up.
I rummaged around in the drawer until I found the lighters. There were three of them left, and I stuck them in my pocket. I found some extra double-A batteries for my radio in there and I took those too. Then I collected all the food I thought I could carry that wouldn’t be missed and wouldn’t spoil. There was beef jerky, candy bars, some string cheese, a couple of little cans of Beanie Weenies, and three apples. That should get me by for a little while at least.
I was pretty satisfied that I had all the basics covered at that point.
You might be thinking I forgot about the main thing in all this, like where I meant to go after I left. You’d be wrong though. I knew I was in a tight spot and didn’t have too many choices right then, and that’s really what scared me the most. It would be worse than doing nothing at all if I ran away and then got caught in a day or two, cause I knew I’d never get a second chance. Let alone how embarrassing it would be.
My friend Jonathan ran away last year, for a little while. He ended up back home the very next day, as soon as he got hungry. I didn’t think I’d have that to worry about, anyway, but the problem of where to go was a tough nut to crack.
My first idea was to go out into the wild country behind the house and hide out for a couple of weeks until people stopped looking for me so hard. I could camp out in the woods for that long, if I had to, and while I was there I could think about what to do next. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked that idea. People went in there to go hiking and fishing and stuff all the time, and even worse than that, Daddy and Mama and Nana hunted there whenever there was a full moon. I was willing to bet my beard they’d look around out there first before they did anything else.
Oh, I don’t really have a beard, you know. But Mama always said I shouldn’t gamble and so I couldn’t bet something real, could I? Anyway, I didn’t dare go somewhere like that, even for a little while. It was too risky.
So what other choices did I have?
Well, I could have asked one of my friends to hide me out for a while. Jonathan probably would, if I asked him. Or if he couldn’t, then there were a couple of others. The only problem with that was, I wasn’t sure I trusted any of them not to spill the beans and get me caught sooner or later. Probably sooner.
No, definitely not, come to think of it. A secret like that was just too juicy not to tell somebody, and then that person has to tell somebody else, and then before you know it everybody knows. And even if they could keep their mouth shut, I knew they couldn’t hide me out forever. It would only be putting off the problem, not solving it.
I sat there racking my brain trying to come up with a solution till I thought I might start to see smoke coming out of my ears. I started to wonder if there even was a solution.
Then I hit on a good one, I thought; my uncle Justin. I’m not sure what made me think of him right then. I’d never met him, and I wasn’t sure if he even knew I existed. Nobody had talked to him since before I was even born, as far as I knew.
All I knew about him was a picture I’d seen in the back of Mama’s photo album. He was her younger brother and (I gathered) not a monster. I was never really clear on why not; Mama wouldn’t say much about him. I just knew he wasn’t one and that because of that nobody would have anything to do with him.
The only other thing I knew was that he lived somewhere in Texas, or at least he did the last time anybody heard anything. That’s where Mama and Daddy were both from, so there was a good chance Justin might still live there.
I knew Daddy grew up on Stonewall Street in Sulphur Springs, because I remembered hearing him and Nana mention it be
fore. I wasn’t totally sure about Mama, but I figured she couldn’t have lived too awful far from there.
She wasn’t a monster till she met Daddy while they were in college, but then they moved to Tennessee and that was that. I guess there were more rabbits there or something. . . I really don’t know.
I’d never thought much about Justin before, but now I started to wonder if he might help me. He was the only family I had who wasn’t a monster, and surely that meant something, didn’t it? Of course he didn’t know me from Adam and who could tell what he might think if I just showed up on his doorstep. I didn’t know what kind of man he was, if he was rich or poor, nasty or kind, or anything at all really. I might never even find him. If you think finding a man named Justin Wilder who (maybe) lives somewhere in Texas is an easy thing to do, just try it sometime.
The only thing I had to go on for sure was that picture in Mama’s album, and it must have been at least ten years old. Could I even still recognize him after all that time? Could anybody? In the picture he was about sixteen, a thin and wiry sort of guy with a blond goatee and a smile that reminded me a little bit of the way Mama smiled sometimes.
I quit thinking about how hopeless it was, so it wouldn’t get me down. I’m not sure exactly when I decided for sure I’d try to find Justin, but the more I thought about it the less I could think of any better idea.
I wasn’t even really sure how to go about it, except to head for Sulphur Springs and see what I found when I got there. I know it sounds like a hare-brained scheme, but like I said I really didn’t have much time to think. I had to get out of town before I lost my only chance. I figured I could decide what to do next after I got to Texas.
But if that was the plan, then I needed one more thing. I catfooted into the living room and pulled Mama’s picture album off the bookshelf. I took the whole thing, partly because I didn’t want them to guess where I was going (which they might do if only the picture of Justin was missing), but mostly because there were pictures of everyone else in there too, and I didn’t want to forget them.
I didn’t think anybody would notice the album was missing. Mama digitized all her photos a long time ago and stores them on CD now, mostly; she likes computers. If anybody did notice the album was gone, it was a thousand to one they’d ever connect it with me. And even if they did, they wouldn’t guess why.
I slipped back upstairs and put the food and the batteries and the picture album in my backpack along with the other stuff, then I zipped it up tight and went back to bed.
In the morning I acted like it was a normal day. I got ready for school just like always and ate a couple of extra pancakes for breakfast. I surprised Mama by giving her a kiss before I left. I hadn’t done that in a while, and I didn’t know if I’d ever have the chance again.
“What was that for?” she asked me, laughing a little and putting her hand up to her cheek.
“Just because,” I told her, with an innocent look. She smiled again and smoothed my hair down a bit, like she did every morning, and then she sent me down to the end of the lane to wait for the school bus. She usually took Lola to school herself a little later on, and with a little luck nobody would know I was missing until sometime late this afternoon.
When I didn’t come home after school, they’d probably start calling around to see where I was, and then it wouldn’t take long for them to find out I hadn’t been at school that day. That’s when things would start to get hairy, and I knew I’d better be long gone before then. I figured I had about eight hours to make my getaway, maybe nine if I was really lucky.
I slipped into the edge of the woods on the far side of the highway, making sure I was far enough into the trees that nobody could possibly see me from the road. Before long the bus came along and stopped at our lane, just in case I was a little late getting out this morning. Then when I didn’t come out, it went on again. You couldn’t see the highway from the house, so I didn’t have to worry about anybody noticing that I didn’t get on the bus.
I waited till it was completely out of sight before I came out of the woods again. I had maybe thirty minutes before Mama came by with Lola, and during that time I had to do something quick.
I headed south along the highway, since that was the direction I needed to be going anyway. It was a good thing Mama would be going the other way with Lola, but I knew I couldn’t count on that to last. She might decide to visit one of her friends that lived down this way or go grocery shopping or something like that.
I should have taken my bike, but I didn’t dare go back home for it now. Nana Maralyn would be at home all day and she would be full of questions about why I wasn’t at school. So I walked.
There weren’t any houses close to ours. I’m not sure if my mom and dad planned it that way or not, but it meant there wasn’t anybody much to see me walking down the highway. Of course, it also meant there wasn’t much traffic and nobody who might give me a ride. I walked almost till noon before I came to the edge of town, and I knew that wouldn’t do. I had to make better time than that.
I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t be able to get far enough away from home by the end of the day to keep them from finding me. It wasn’t looking good, unless I found a way to get somewhere that was faster than my own two feet.
I thought about getting a bus ticket, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough money for that, and besides, I was afraid the girl at the ticket counter would remember me later if people asked. If she did, she might tell them where I went and get me caught as soon as I stepped off the bus.
What I really needed was to get as far away as I could, as quick as I could, with nobody noticing. That was shaping up to be harder than I thought.
There’s a big truck stop close to the interstate in our town, and I finally decided I’d go down there and see if I could scrounge a ride somewhere. I really didn’t even care where it was at that point, as long as it was far away from home. I could figure out how to get to Texas later, when the wolves weren’t so hot on my heels.
I got to the truck stop about two o’clock, I guess. I knew my time was running out, so I started nosing around the parked trucks. The best thing would be if I could stow away in one of them, because then even the driver wouldn’t know I was there, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. Most of the trucks are locked up tight until they get to wherever they’re going, so you can’t get inside. But if you’re smart and if you have just a smidgen of luck, you can still find ways.
I had to be careful out in that parking lot. Drivers don’t like it when they see people hanging around their trucks. They always think you’re trying to steal something or slash their tires or just that you’re generally up to no good. I didn’t want that. So I pretended I was looking for pocket change. You can almost always find some in a big parking lot, if you look for awhile. If somebody saw me staring at the pavement instead of the trucks, they might just possibly not bother.
I finally found a flat-bed truck that was carrying a load of septic tanks, and that suited me just fine. I could open up one of the tanks and crawl down inside where nobody would ever think to look for me, and there was plenty of room in one of them. Go ahead and laugh at me if you want to; I bet you couldn’t have found anything better in such a tight spot.
I glanced around to make sure nobody was looking. The flatbed was screened off from the store and the gas pumps by two other tall trucks parked on each side of it, so I was ninety-nine percent sure nobody could see me.
I grabbed the edge of the bed and hoisted myself up, using one of the tires for a stepping stone. The tanks were sitting upright on the bed, tied down with steel hawsers to keep them from falling over. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to climb up one of them until I found a way of scrunching myself in between two tanks and working my way up like I was climbing a tree. They were made of concrete, so that helped a lot because of the friction. Plastic ones would have been much harder to deal with.
Anyway, I finally got to the top of the first one in l
ine and unfastened the lid. It was just clear plastic, so I popped it off without too much trouble and eeled my way down inside the tank. It was dark in there at first until my eyes adjusted.
The tank was about three feet across and maybe six feet high. Not big enough to be really comfortable, but not as bad as it could have been. I was able to reach up and pull myself out when I needed to, and that was important. I didn’t even want to imagine how embarrassing it would be to get stuck inside a sewage tank and be discovered there whenever the truck got to wherever it was going.
I fixed the lid back in place so nobody would have any reason to come looking at the tank I was in. Then I sat down on the concrete floor and rested my back against the wall. It curved out just a little bit, so that made it pretty comfortable.
Then I waited.
And waited, and waited some more. I started to think that dude would never leave. Even the extra large all-you-can-eat catfish plate and a really hot shower doesn’t take that long to finish.
It must have been almost two hours before I finally heard somebody messing around making sure the tie-down lines were tight, and then I knew we’d be on our way soon. A good thing too, because I should have been home thirty minutes ago. It wouldn’t be long before the hunt was up, if it wasn’t already.
I heard the door of the truck slam and felt the vibration when the engine started up, and finally we started to move.
I felt the truck bounce through a pothole as it pulled out onto the highway, rattling my tank and making me hit my head against the wall. The driver stopped again after a minute, I guessed at the red light. Not long after that I felt us get on the interstate, but I couldn’t have told you which way he was headed to save my life. It does funny things to your sense of direction when you can’t see where you’re going. The truck settled down to a steady speed, and that was that.
I let out a sigh of relief. The odds were a thousand to one that anybody would ever find me now.
Cry for the Moon: The Last Werewolf Hunter, Book 1 Page 2
