Wolf on the Road

by Lynn Red

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  She still hadn’t breathed, and was becoming keenly aware of a burning sensation deep in her chest. But she was detached, not panicking, and was somehow completely calm. Her head flopped to the side, though she wasn’t sure if she’d moved it, or her muscles just went slack. She licked her lips and was immediately impressed that she’d managed such a fine movement. In the next second though, her chest burned again. Her heart, which she thought had stopped beating, thumped again in a slow, irregular pattern.

  “I’m dead?” she whispered into the darkness. It wasn’t a sad statement, wasn’t anything but an observation. Mali blinked, and saw that shape again on the dune. It was hunched over and as she watched, moved closer.

  Her eyes had gone so out of focus that she didn’t realize he was standing right next to her. “Dead? Not yet,” he said. He dove over her, and try as she might, she couldn’t follow his movements with her sluggish, syrup-filled head. All she could do was blink and wonder what he meant, and also wonder who he was and if he was real, or if it was just the fading memory of a dying brain.

  She heard sounds; distant, clashing, terrible sounds. There were screams, crackling sounds, and burst after burst of thunder. Lightning crashed in the way it can only do in the desert. The brilliant flashes made her eyes throb, but past that, she had no sensations, she had no recognition of the fact that she was a broken mess.

  “This is gonna hurt,” she heard. It was the same voice from earlier that told her she wasn’t dead. She blinked and tried to see, but her vision was blurry, Vaseline-smeared and useless. She felt the heat of his breath against her neck, and then something pricked at her throat.

  Mali’s eyes shot open. She stared up into the blackness and screamed louder and harder than she ever had.

  She didn’t know if she was dead or not, but she knew one thing.

  This stranger? He wasn’t lying about it hurting. Holy shit was he telling the truth about that.

  2

  Alone in the dark isn’t a very good place to wake up, especially if you are almost completely sure that you’re dead. It gives a person the uneasy feeling that maybe, just maybe, the Greeks were right.

  Mali opened her eyes slowly, expecting... well, not knowing quite what to expect. The first thing she saw was nothing at all.

  “I’m dead,” she said flatly. “I’m dead and now I’m in hell. Great. First a flat tire in the rain, then I got run down by a bunch of bikers, and now I’m dead and in hell. I guess I shouldn’t have complained so much about work.”

  “You gotta do what you’re good at,” a voice—a familiar one—said. “Seems to me, anyway.”

  Immediately, Mali recoiled like a cat in a bathtub. She kicked her legs, pushing her body backward until she found herself caught up in a canvas enclosure. “Get away!” she said. “I’m dead!”

  A dull ache throbbed in her neck. She put her hand on the origin of the pain and probed a number of holes in the skin. “I’m dead,” she repeated. “Right?”

  It was dark, but not pitch-black. Mali could make out the shape of a person moving toward her. He tried to grab her hand. She batted him away and once again scooted along the floor. “Where the hell am I? Am I dead?”

  He laughed a dry, humorless sort of laughter. Mali tried backing up again, but found her feet just scrabbling against a familiar-feeling floor. “A tent?” she asked. “Why would I be dead and in a tent?”

  “Hold on,” he reached for her again, this time his hand shooting out with impossible speed. He grabbed her wrist and squeezed in a way that seemed to Mali to be a warning not to try and get away again. “You’re hurt. Bad. But you’re not going to die. Of course, the reason you aren’t going to die might not make you exactly happy.”

  Mali shook her head. “Why wouldn’t I be happy about being alive?” Once again she fingered the holes in her neck. “What happened to me?”

  “Quiet,” the man said, his voice gruff and soft at the same time. “You keep trying to get away from me, and you keep talking, you’re going to make this whole thing take an awful long time. You need to heal, and then we need to get the hell out of here.”

  Something about his voice calmed Mali’s nerves. Or maybe it was that she just had no choice but to either panic, or to relax, and she couldn’t remember the last time that panicking did her any good. Though that didn’t stop her from panicking, truth be told.

  “Who are you?” she asked, trying to calm her nerves by talking. “And where am I?”

  “A tent,” he said and then shrugged. “As for me, I’m just someone who happened along and found you in trouble.”

  Mali was shaking her head. “But I was just going to work,” she said. “Going to my boring security job. And then I got a flat tire, and then the lights... wait, you know what those lights were, don’t you?”

  “Boy, don’t I know?” the man asked flatly. “I’ve been trailing them for hundreds of miles trying to figure out what they are, and if they’re any threat to James—” he cut himself off, as though he’d said more than he meant to say. “Anyway, just trying to figure out what they are. I’m just a curious sort, I guess.”

  “How’d you get me away from them?” she asked. “There was a whole bunch. I can’t remember...”

  “What do you remember?” he asked when Mali trailed off.

  She shook her head softly. When she did, a dull ache throbbed in the left side of her skull. Lifting her hand, she massaged her scalp and pressed her thumb into her temple. Then, she felt the mystery man’s hand on her neck. “Let me,” he said. “I told you, you need to heal.”

  He massaged gently at first, and then a little stronger. A swirl of relief trickled through Mali, and she let out a sigh of pleasure when he stuck his thumb into the hollow of her shoulder blade. He moved around behind her, supporting her weight with his chest, which Mali realized was very hard and very warm. Inhumanly warm.

  She relaxed against him. “That’s good,” she whispered. “You’re pretty damn good at that. I don’t know if my neck’s ever hurt this bad.”

  “Well, you’ve probably never been run over four or five times within thirty seconds. I imagine that’s enough to give you a pretty nasty cramp.”

  She stiffened.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. But it’s important that you tell me what you remember. I don’t like rushing you, but,” he took a long, deep breath that he let out slowly. “Yeah, like I said, important.”

  “I—I don’t know,” she finally said. “I remember my bike getting a flat, and then I pulled off the road. I called my friend and—oh God,” she hissed, “Derrick! God I hope he’s—”

  “He’s fine,” the man said softly, still massaging Mali’s back, and then moving to her other shoulder. “I sent him home with your motorcycle. He seemed a little concerned, but, yeah, he finally listened to me.”

  Mali arched an eyebrow, which somehow hurt. “What did you do to him?”

  “To him? Nothing. He showed up a few minutes after I... er, well after I began seeing to you. There was a pretty good mess, so I think he just wanted to make sure you were all right. He wanted to take you to a hospital, but it was too late for that sort of thing. Way, way too late for that.”

  “That’s ominous,” Mali said. “And I’m still not sure I’m not dead.”

  That time, he laughed out loud. “No, you’re not dead. Can we move on to the other topic?”

  She shivered, and then shrugged. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I just have really fuzzy memories. Nothing really clear at all. After the lights, I tried to run but my ankle was sprained and—” she looked down at her foot, flexing it up and down. “How the hell?”

  Her eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dimness. “It was sprained. Or twisted... or something. I couldn’t walk. I could hardly hobble. How does it not hurt?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll explain things soon. But I need to know if you remember their faces.”

  �
��Faces?” she asked. “No, I don’t remember anything that specific. I just remember... wait, were you the thing on the dune?”

  “Thing, she calls me,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “Save a girl from a bunch of shape-shifting biker assholes and—oh hell, I just said that out loud didn’t I?”

  From the way Mali was staring at him with her mouth wide open, he got the idea that yes; he had indeed said it out loud. “Damn it.”

  She shook her head slowly from side to side, and then cocked her head to the left and closed her eyes. “Shape shifting bikers? What the hell are you talking about? Oh shit,” she said as memories flooded back. “You mean to tell me... you were the thing on the dune! You’re... what are you?”

  “Not important,” he said, trying to think quick. “My name’s Jake Danniken, my brother’s the, alph—the mayor of a city called Jamesburg, and I need to take you there.”

  Mali just stared. “No,” she said flatly. “Why the hell would I go with someone I’ve never met to a place I’ve never heard of?”

  “Fate?” he offered weakly. When she just put her hands on her hips and pursed out her lips, he shrugged. “Yeah, didn’t think it’d work. Look, I can’t explain things because honestly I don’t understand them. All I know is that I’ve been following those jerkoffs for three days, and never saw them do much of anything except drink shitty beer and play grab-ass. That is, until they saw you.”

  Mali was beginning to get an inkling of the situation, but the whole thing was just too ridiculous to take seriously at all. “I’m nobody special,” she said. “And I don’t mean that in a depressive sort of way. I’m a security guard at a hotel. Like... why the hell would a gang of—and I’m just saying this because you did—shape shifting bikers want anything to do with me? I was obviously an easy target and they were looking for a cheap score.”

  Jake shook his head. For the first time, Mali looked at him more deeply than as a passing curiosity. He had these steely hazel eyes with flecks of light in them. It reminded her of sparks bursting from a struck piece of flint. He had a chin, too, but not a giant Captain America jaw, just a very strong one. He noticed her looking after a couple seconds. “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Er, no, sorry.” She laughed it off, trying to act like she hadn’t just been visually devouring him. “I was just, you know...”

  “Thinking?” he asked with a grin that she could’ve slapped off his gorgeous face if she had the wherewithal. And, you know, the desire to hit him. He did just save her, after all. Or at least, that’s how things looked.

  As she did the thinking she claimed to be doing, something occurred to Mali that wasn’t entirely pleasant. “How do I know you’re not with them?” she asked. “How do I know you aren’t another shape shifting biker?”

  He furrowed his brow, frowning deeply. “So you’re willing to just go along with the shape shifting business? That’s not entirely what I expected to hear.”

  Mali wandered away from the outcropping they stood behind, and shoved her fists into the small of her back. She bent backwards, sighing when her back finally gave a satisfying pop! and then relaxed slightly. She looked back at him, popped her back again, and then squatted down. After thinking for a moment, she stood back up and began to pace back to where Jake was standing, but changed her mind and crouched again.

  “This is like watching someone come unglued,” he complained, loudly enough she could hear, which seemed to be the point.

  “You got some damn nerve,” she said. “Like, really, you have some incredible nerve. Or maybe I should say gall. Or gumption, though I don’t know if I’ve ever actually learned the definition for gumption. Whatever it is, you’ve got it though.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jake finally did walk closer to where Mali was standing, but she matched every step of his forward with one back. “Those guys were gonna kill you! Suddenly, I understand all my little brother’s bitching about humans. I always took him for a baby, but you people are infuriating!”

  There was a moment of silence, that both of them needed to catch their breath a little and let the tension run down a few notches. When Jake next opened his mouth, Mali did at the exact same time, and they both got out a half-syllable before shutting up.

  “You first,” they said in unison.

  “No you!” they did it again. That time, Mali’s scowl cracked slightly.

  “I’m not talking until you do,” she said.

  “You talk first because I’m not saying shit,” Jake offered, at the exact same time Mali was insisting he talk first.

  The two of them sighed, Jake smiled and Mali cracked a single boom of laughter. “Okay, okay,” she finally said as she raised her hands to ward off him talking. “Let’s get something straight. I don’t believe a word you said, and I’m never going anywhere with you as soon as we go back and get my bike. I’m out of here. Shit, I probably need to get back to town and start begging for my job. My boss isn’t exactly the caring sort.”

  Jake studied her face like a predator trying to find a weakness in a flock of deer. His eyes were so narrowed that the dark irises almost seemed black. He wasn’t frowning, but the lines in the corners of his mouth made him vaguely resemble a steely-eyed Clint Eastwood staring down the sights of a pistol, about to blast some poor outlaw to hell.

  “You’re cute when you’re mad,” he said after a long while.

  In a move that Jake did not in any way expect, although he probably should’ve, Mali shot him a nasty look. “Really? You just said that? You for some reason felt like it was appropriate to comment on the way I look while I’m worried about my job? And about, you know, what the hell is going on in my entire life right now? And you thought ‘hey, I know what I’ll do. I’m gonna call her pretty, that’ll solve everything.’ You really did that?”

  Jake looked immediately disarmed. “Well, I mean, I just thought it so I said it.”

  “I imagine you do a lot of that, don’t you?”

  “No, just when what I’m saying is true.”

  She put her hands on her hips after hiking up her jeans. “No, jackass, I mean that you think without talking. You big, obnoxious hero types always seem to think that your swagger is good enough, so you don’t need a filter on your mouth. Do I have it about right?”

  Jake stared back, not quite sure what to make of this transformation. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, of course you didn’t. Your type never does. You never mean things when you get called on your bullshit. It was just a joke, you’d say, or that you meant something a different way. Well god damn it, hey! Listen to me!”

  Jake had started examining something he found stuck in the toe of his boot. At first it looked like a thumbtack or maybe a goathead burr, but when he looked closer, he saw that it was crystalline and sharp. Not only was it something he’d never noticed before, examining this tiny shard was also a good way to pretend he wasn’t listening to Mali’s verbal assault. If nothing else, he’d learned that when someone really gets going, it might be best to just let them go until they run out of gas.

  “You’re not running out of gas anytime soon, are you?” he asked out loud and immediately sighed in disappointment at himself. “My damn mouth. I guess you’re right about that whole filter thing.”

  When he finally got the courage up to look back toward Mali, she still had her hands on her hips, but she’d joined that universal symbol of being put-out with pursed lips and a narrow-eyed scowl.

  “I’m sorry!” he finally said, standing up and starting to get excited. “I say things I don’t mean because usually, you know, alpha wolves don’t have to watch their damn mouths. I can tell you’re different though. I’m guessing you’re not one for putting up with shit?”

  “Did you just say ‘alpha wolf’?” Mali asked, curling her lip into a sneer. “You got a bunch of tee shirts with howling wolves to go with your attitude? How about a fedora or two? Are you the sort that stares at girls when they’re at the gym and doesn’t even bother t
rying to hide it when you take photos of them mid-squat?”

  Jake didn’t respond. He was still staring at the shard he pulled from his boot, and turning over in his fingers. “Shit,” he said casually. “You know what this is?”

  Mali immediately forgot her harangue and squatted down. If anything could get her away from being irritated, it was a mystery. “Looks like a tooth,” she said. “Where’d you get a metal tooth?”

  Jake shook his head and not for the first time, Mali noticed that his hair moved in a certain way that reminded her of a movie star. He’d obviously not spent much time styling it, and the wind had done a good job of removing anything he’d done, but it still fell into place just so. “Staring at me again?” he asked. He curled the left corner of his mouth in a smile, but didn’t look away from what was, in fact, a metal tooth.

  “No,” Mali said quickly. “Also, shut up.”

  He rotated the tooth again, staring at the way sunlight caught it and glinted off in little flashes. “We need to get this to my brother,” he said. “Something about it just isn’t right. First of all, like where the hell I got a tooth stuck in my boot, and second of all, why there’s a tooth in my boot. I don’t know, but I get the feeling it has something to do with those bikers.”

  “The shape shifting ones? What kind of shapes? Triangles?” Mali asked, standing up and sighing. “I need to get home.”

  Instead of responding, Jake just grabbed her hand and dragged her after him. “Hey!” she cried out. “What the hell are you doing?”

  He spun on his heel, grabbing her other wrist at the exact same time. “I’m not going to let anything hurt you,” he said. “You can call me whatever you want—I’m no hero—but you’re in trouble and we need to find out why.”

  She stared at him for a brief moment. Then, Mali swallowed hard. “You seem serious,” she said.

  As the two of them sat there watching each other’s eyes, she started to remember. “They swarmed me,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I was dead. And then I woke up with this bite thing on my neck and...”