The Lupin Project

by Allan Leverone

  His left hand traced the outline of her breasts through her blouse and she moaned softly and he kissed her harder, and again she returned the kiss with enthusiasm, the ferocity of her response catching him by surprise. His hand lingered over the swell of her breasts and then began moving down her belly, and he could feel it rise and fall.

  She was breathing heavily. So was he.

  He slipped his hand over her belt, moving steadily further south, down between her legs, and she parted them slightly and moaned again, and he could feel the heat through her tight jeans. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.

  He fumbled for her belt, struggling to open it with one hand, because he damn sure didn’t want to remove the other from behind her head. But the buckle wouldn’t cooperate, and he realized her hands were now on him, rubbing the bulge through his jeans, and he thought he might explode, in more ways than one, and—

  A thump sounded from outside, somewhere behind the Caprice.

  It was more of a vibration than an actual noise, and at first he barely noticed, and even after it penetrated his consciousness he didn’t care. He ignored it because it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Alicia. She was into him just as much as he was into her, and he had waited so long for this, and nothing was going to stop—

  A second thump, followed by a muffled rustling sound, like something heavy being dragged across the dead leaves that formed a rough carpet on the late-fall forest floor.

  Alicia pulled back, and Eddie thought he might scream in frustration. The whole point in coming out here was to be alone, and now they weren’t alone? How was that even possible? They were at least a quarter-mile into a long-abandoned trail that was totally empty. He knew it was empty because he hadn’t seen another living soul during the entire long, slow drive into the forest.

  “What was that?” she whispered. “Did you hear that?”

  “It’s nothing,” he whispered back after a short delay.

  Thump.

  “Somebody’s out there.” The shakiness was back in Alicia’s voice, and now it sounded a lot more like real fear than the previous undefined nervousness.

  “That’s impossible,” Eddie said, although at the moment he couldn’t even convince himself of the truth of his words, much less Alicia Havens.

  He realized they were no longer touching each other, and out of nowhere a thought occurred to him like a thunderbolt ripping out of a clear-blue sky: he wasn’t getting lucky tonight. That moment had passed. Whatever ardor they’d generated just seconds before had disappeared and it wasn’t coming back.

  Not now.

  He sighed and reached for the headlight knob and pulled it. The lights flashed on and he stared out the windshield in slack-jawed surprise. Next to him, Alicia gasped.

  Animal eyes ringed the front of the car in a ragged semicircle, the blaze of the headlights reflecting back in ghostly pairs. The eyes were low to the ground, hovering maybe eighteen to twenty-four inches above the forest floor. They stared unblinkingly at the Chevy, and Eddie had the disturbing sensation that the eyes could see right into the car; that not only could they see inside it they could sense the fear and confusion of its occupants.

  And they were enjoying it.

  That was impossible, of course. It was his nerves talking. The only thing those eyes should be able to see right now were the glare of the bright yellow twin headlight beams. The animals should be completely blinded by that glare. But regardless of what the ring of staring eyes could or could not see, they were eerie as hell.

  They were utterly terrifying, in fact, because they didn’t blink and they didn’t move and they gazed, as one, directly into the Caprice.

  At Eddie and Alicia.

  “Dogs,” Alicia whispered. “I think they’re dogs. There must be half a dozen of them out there.”

  “At least that many. And I…” Eddie’s voice trailed away and he shook his head in the dark.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure they’re dogs at all.”

  “What else would they be?”

  “I think they might be wolves.”

  2

  “Wolves? I thought wolves disappeared from this part of the country decades ago.”

  Eddie shrugged, and then realized Alicia couldn’t see him.

  “They did,” he said. “But they’ve been reintroduced into the region in small numbers.”

  “That doesn’t look like a small number to me.”

  “Everything’s relative I guess, but I agree. It sure doesn’t look like a small number at the moment.”

  “Eddie, let’s get out of here. I want to go home.”

  He nodded. He was actually relieved. He wanted nothing more right now than to backtrack out the old logging road and return to civilization, such as it was. Maybe on the way he could convince her to go with him to Dunkin’s and finish their night there. Drink coffee and talk. Save the weed and the rest of the beer for next weekend and try again.

  “They’re coming closer,” she said, and he realized she was right. The semicircle was tightening. The ghostly eyes had grown larger.

  He remembered reading once that wolves were sophisticated hunters who operated in packs as a well-coordinated team, working together to fell their prey, which was often animals much larger than the wolves themselves.

  But “prey” to a wolf pack meant cattle or deer, the weak or the injured in a herd, not a pair of healthy human teenagers locked away inside a car, scared kids whose only reason for being here was to achieve states of altered consciousness and have sex.

  “Get us out of here,” she said. Alicia’s voice had bypassed nervous and moved on to terrified. Eddie couldn’t blame her. He felt pretty much the same.

  He threw his right arm across the back of the bench seat, twisting to look out the rear window. There wasn’t room to turn the car around, so he would have to reverse the length of the logging trail until reaching Mountain View Road. It would be a pain in the ass, but the maneuver had been performed by generations of teens over the years. Eddie himself had done it more than once after sharing beer and weed with other girls. All it took was a little concentration.

  He eased the gearshift into reverse and the white back-up lights at the rear of the car flashed on, and for the second time in no more than ninety seconds, Eddie Senna felt his eyes widen in total surprise.

  The trail behind the Caprice was blocked by a downed tree.

  Eddie had eased his foot off the brake to begin backing up, and now he forced it to the floor probably harder than was necessary, but he was just so…startled.

  Confused.

  Freaked right the fuck out.

  The car jerked to a sudden stop and Alicia gasped in surprise. The sound came out muffled and it reminded Eddie of the breathless squeak a mouse might make as the spring-loaded trap came smashing down on its back.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, and he realized his voice was sounding a little squeaky itself.

  “Why did you stop? Keep going!”

  Eddie swiveled his head to look at Alicia, whose shadowy form was now more or less visible thanks to the headlights reflecting off the densely packed trees outside. Even in the fuzzy half-light he could see her huge eyes, her fearful expression.

  He glanced forward, out the windshield, and saw that the animals—they were wolves, and somewhere in the back of his mind he congratulated himself on being right—had crept still closer to the car. Their lithe silver/grey bodies moved steadily forward, eyes locked on his as their paws lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped.

  “Why aren’t you moving? Get moving!” Alicia’s voice shook, she was near panic, and Eddie knew if he there had been sufficient light in the car’s interior he would see tears rolling down her pretty face.

  “I can’t get moving. I can’t go anywhere.” He tried to keep his own voice steady, not because he wasn’t terrified but because he didn’t want to incite even more fear in his maybe-girlfriend.

  “What do you mean you can’t move?” S
he spun in her seat and pointed behind the car. “Just back up and…”

  Her voice faded away as she stared in disbelief out the rear window. “There’s a big log…”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “How did a big log get behind your car?”

  “That must have been the sound we heard while we were…you know.” He realized that wasn’t what she had asked, but how the hell was he supposed to answer her question? He had no better handle on that particular issue than she did.

  “But…how…”

  “I don’t know how. But I’ll get us out of here, don’t worry.”

  “Can you back over the log? Will your car make it?”

  Eddie pursed his lips as he stared out the rear window. The illumination provided by the back-up lights was much less than he would have liked right now, and the exact thickness of the downed tree was impossible to determine. It appeared to be close to a foot in diameter, though, and he shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know.”

  “Eddie,” she whispered. “Look behind the car.”

  “I am.”

  “Look closer.”

  A couple of the wolves they had seen in front of the car had flanked them while they sat and were closing in from behind, expanding the semicircle of animals into a full, if ragged and widely spaced, circle. Through the dim light Eddie could just make them out. They were moving slowly and purposefully, but they were coming.

  Coming for Eddie and Alicia.

  Without another word, he lifted his foot off the brake and stomped down on the gas pedal. The tires skidded for a half-second on the dead leaves and dirt, and then the Caprice shot backward.

  The car struck the log and bounced violently into the air with a screech of crumpling metal. The rear wheels cleared the obstruction and slammed down on the other side, and for just a moment Eddie felt the exhilarating rush of triumph.

  Take that, fuckers! he wanted to scream, but before he could, a loud CLUNK shook the Caprice from beneath its frame and the car shuddered to a halt.

  “Go!” Alicia said. “Go! They’re still coming!”

  Eddie took his foot off the gas and then jammed the pedal down again. The engine screamed, the car bucked and vibrated.

  But it didn’t move.

  “I think that log is jammed against the wheels or the axle, or it busted up something underneath the car.”

  “What are we going to do?” Alicia’s whisper sounded as loud as a gunshot.

  Eddie didn’t want to admit he had no idea. “Try your cellphone,” he said. “I doubt we’ll get a signal, but try anyway.”

  Alicia reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. Even in the dim lighting he could see her hand shaking violently. The phone’s screen flashed on, bathing her face in an eerie greyish-white. A second later came the words he was dreading. “Nothing. No service.”

  It was disappointing but not surprising. The lack of a cell signal in the vicinity of the Tamerlane Research Facility was common knowledge among New Quebec teens. This logging road and others abutted the rear of the property, and rumor had it that the secretive researchers used some kind of jamming equipment to disrupt cell service in the area, although nobody knew why.

  They stared at each other across the darkness of the front seat. Alicia glanced out the windshield and then back at Eddie. “They’re still coming.”

  By now the wolf pack, or whatever the hell it was, had almost fully closed ranks. The circle was no longer ragged. It looked almost militarily crisp, the animals standing shoulder to shoulder at precise intervals a few feet from the car.

  And approaching.

  A wave of hostility toward Alicia washed over Eddie. They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming.

  He wanted to scream at her, “I know they’re fucking coming! Instead of repeating the obvious, how about you do something productive and come up with a solution to our goddamned problem, like I’m trying to do!”

  But of course he didn’t scream that.

  Didn’t say it.

  Didn’t whisper it.

  This wasn’t Alicia Havens’ fault any more than it was his. In fact, it was more his fault than Alicia’s when you got right down to it. He was the one who had talked her into going parking. He was the one who had decided on using this ancient, ratty logging trail on the outskirts of the U.S. Army’s Tamerlane Research Facility to drink and smoke and hopefully get lucky.

  He was the one. She should be screaming and swearing at him, not the other way around.

  And just like that, he knew what he had to do.

  “Reach into the glove box,” he said quietly. “There should be a flashlight in there. Take it out and hand it to me.”

  “Why do you need a flashlight?”

  “Just get it for me.”

  “You’re not going to go out there, are you? You can’t go out there, Eddie. Those…things…they’ll—”

  “What choice do we have? Our cell phones don’t work and if we wait for someone to come along and find us, we’ll be here until spring.”

  “But what good will it do to go outside? What can you accomplish?”

  “I’ll see why the car won’t move. If the log is jammed into the drive shaft, I’ll try to pull it out and hopefully give us a chance to get the hell out of here.”

  “But Eddie, the wolves—”

  “Enough!” He could see the wolves just as clearly as Alicia could. He could imagine just as easily as she could what they were capable of. But the situation wasn’t going to magically improve on its own. He supposed there was always the possibility the animals might get tired of stalking their prey and simply give up and walk away, go back to wherever the hell they had come from.

  But one look into their eyes, one consideration of their single-minded focus, told Eddie Senna the truth: that delaying action now would only result in a situation down the line that was even worse than the current one, as hard as that was to believe.

  Alicia’s head jerked back at his words as if he had slapped her across the face. She shut her mouth and slid as far away from him as she could, pressing her body tightly against the passenger side door. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them to her chest.

  Eddie felt instantly guilty about yelling. He hadn’t meant to snap at her like that.

  But it was his fear talking, the kind of deep-in-the-gut, stomach-churning, moan-inducing terror he hadn’t felt since he was three years old and became convinced a guy in a hockey mask was hiding under his bed after sneaking downstairs and seeing a snippet of the movie his parents had been watching when they thought he and his brother were sleeping.

  And this was worse than that long-buried memory.

  Much worse.

  Because this was real.

  Eddie leaned across the front seat and scrabbled for the latch to open the glove box. His first clumsy swipe missed entirely and he realized how badly he was shaking. Not just his hands, but his whole body felt as though high voltage electricity was surging through it.

  He forced himself to slow down and try again. This attempt was successful, and the glove box door fell open. Watery yellow light splashed the interior of the Caprice as Eddie pushed aside his registration and the ancient car’s owner’s manual, a book he’d never even bothered to look at. He wrapped his fingers around the flashlight and removed it from the glove compartment, wondering when he had last checked the batteries.

  He closed the glove box and the car’s interior was plunged back into darkness, but only for a moment. He flicked the flashlight’s on/off switch and against all odds a bright, strong beam filled the car.

  “Small favors,” he mumbled and glanced over at Alicia. The illumination reflected off twin tear tracks running down her cheeks, and the guilt he had felt a moment ago intensified.

  “I’m sorry for snapping at you, Alicia.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said as she swallowed back a sob. “I just don’t want you going out there and getting hurt,
or…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but of course she didn’t have to. They were both thinking the same thing, anyway.

  “I’m going to be okay,” he said without much conviction.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she turned her head and gazed out the side window.

  Eddie placed a hand on her thigh. It was almost exactly the same place he had touched a lifetime ago—before the arrival of the wolves—but this time the gesture was entirely non-sexual.

  She hesitated a moment and then covered his hand with both of her own. She squeezed briefly, then pulled her hands away and used them to cover her face, turning back toward the side window but failing to hide the sound of her sobs.

  “I’ll be okay, Alicia, I’m sure of it,” he lied.

  When she didn’t respond, he turned around and leaned over the seatback. Reached into the rear of the car and began rummaging through the assorted junk that had seemed to sprout of its own accord in the back seat: papers from school he had tossed back there but never gotten around to throwing away. Empty video game cases, the discs having found their way into his bedroom at home. Fast-food bags he had wadded up and thrown over his shoulder. Empty Styrofoam coffee cups.

  Eventually he found what he was looking for. He lifted the lug wrench off the back seat and faced forward. Hefted it in his hands. It was an iron bar, solid and heavy, maybe eighteen inches long and curved at one end. Its head was molded to fit around the lug nuts in the event it was necessary to change a tire.

  Eddie had never changed a tire.

  Had never used a lug wrench for its intended purpose. Or for any purpose.

  Now he hoped it would save his life.

  He looked over at Alicia. She continued to stare resolutely out the side window. Over her shoulder Eddie could see one of the wolves, now standing just inches from the side of the car. He knew if he looked out his own side window he would see another.

  “Wish me luck,” he said.

  “Don’t go out there.”

  He didn’t answer because there was nothing to say. Not going out there wasn’t an option.