by Eric Ellert
Moren hit the locks and shook her head. She looked straight ahead, peeking through the intermittent wipers as the defogger tried to do its job. "Anything that goes on inside him...I'd think they know. That's the problem. Rau says, our weaknesses have been anticipated."
Moren let the car idle forward. Faudron slipped outside determined to wake Rau up.
Down east, from the town's direction, a truck backfired and ground gears with a big diesel mash as it approached. "Wait, wait." Faudron slipped into the car and they switched seats.
The mountain fog still hung on the road; the air was dewy as if it wanted to rain cold all afternoon. A small, green garbage truck edged into view, driving on the shoulder, lighting up the day with halogen lights. When the driver noticed their vehicle, he put on one of those chirpers they use when backing up. Even with the flashing lights atop the truck, it was hard to tell how close it was, or how much clearance they had as they passed each other. To be on the safe side, Faudron put a wheel up on the shoulder, and the car at a good 25 degree angle.
They tangled with the unkempt bushes lining this portion of the road and the bushes brushed against the window. Faudron could barely see, blind on the right corner beneath her headlights. What she did see appeared almost to float as if they were in a boat in a sea full of debris.
All along the bushes lay dead wolves. She wanted to tear off and get around the truck, but had to stop when one of the guys got out and crossed the road. He carried a pair of hooks, like stevedore's used to use.
The weather had been chilly for the season, and they'd been to town recently so this ought to have been new, but the wolf carcasses smelled, and looked as if they had been sitting there for days.
"Moren," Faudron whispered. "Did you say werewolves live a real long time? Even these?"
Moren wiped the window with her sleeve but the steam was on the outside and she rolled down the window.
"Hey, be careful," Faudron said.
"You really give a damn, now. Karen used to talk about things her parents told her, and they weren't supposed to. All these people, well, most of them, volunteered way back, for a shot they were told would give them their dreams. No cost at all. I'm sorry, I should have told you, but mom and dad said wait. They said it would all work out, really soon."
"You think they'll try to keep us here?"
"No, who would you tell once you were out there?"
One of the guys on the truck picked the carcasses up and slipped them into the back. When they got in front of Rau's house, the line of dead wolves ended. He scrunched them in the back and got into the truck.
Moren looked shook up. "They don't usually come down this end. I took a drive with mom one morning, really early, just before dawn when they all stagger home. I don't think they have that much time left. I think they kind of know. So they give themselves to the hunt. Or they're given to it. I'm not quite sure. But it get's, well, bigger every couple of weeks."
"Let's go to town and leave."
"You can call Rau."
"Why?"
One simple word in sister speak; why had no one told them, which made it a lie. Why were the houses run-down and so government issue like some W.W.II Manhattan Project paradise built to keep people who couldn't leave sort of happy in a sort of home. Why was the mall so big and so old as if the population was winding down? Why did no one know about this place?
"Did anyone ever mention rabbis shots to you?"
"No," Moren said, insulted. "You're the dog in the family."
"I love dad, Mor, even mom , even the p.p. lama, but I hate you. Just wanted you to know that in case anything bad happens to me."
"Makes perfect sense."
"I'll drive; we'll go far," Moren said.
"Granma's house in Florida?"
"No, maybe Florida, but not granma's house."
"Why not?" Moren asked.
"Wolves live there."
Chapter 10
They made it to town. The guy from yesterday was putting ponchos back in their boxes. Kids, not many of them, but kids boarded the school bus. Everything was backward. They came from all the houses to get on a bus when they could just as easily walk. They stood in line, no one around to tell them not to talk but no one talking, as if they'd said everything there was to say about this town. Faudron wanted to tap the horn, warn them, yell "get in", but when she tapped the horn, none of them looked over and when they piled in, one girl, somewhere around twelve, wearing the designer, rebel fashions mom mustn't have been allowed to where, looked back and smiled the sneary, Zoloft-prosaic smile the turds from the suburban grammar school she'd briefly attended had smiled and suddenly she knew that they knew what they were and what was coming.
The last one on the bus was a girl about Moren's age. She had a gash on her face and a bandaged-up arm. Moren stared after her. "Night of the wilding way. Must have been lucky last night. Lots 'a luck tonight." Moren opened her eyes wide and jerked her head back two or three inches the way she did whenever she smelt the slightest bit of blood.
"You saying what I think you're saying?"
"You're surprised about the timeline. It's a little different for people down on Lake End Road, but not all that different."
"You weren't listening," Faudron said.
"You were mad cause I said whatever. Whatever by the way. And you had your little date with Rau."
"It wasn't."
"And didn't ask any of the right questions. Like, did it ever occur to you that these people like it here? And if you don't turn into a werewolf at twenty, you won't, but if I or you want to become one...we can."
"You would?"
"It's be easier, wouldn't it? And you could be the Key, like on Buffy, not my real sister at all."
She had an answer ready, but she didn't want to set Moren off. "I just want to stop at the school for a moment," Faudron said. "Somebody in there must know; somebody in there must care."
"You never went to public school, did you?"
"No, not for long."
"Whatever, big sis. It ain't that they let 'em become wolves, it's that they let 'em become wolves and they kill 'em. Some of them. The slower ones, I guess."
"You can't get away with things like that?"
"There's another cemetery. Karen used to whisper about it."
"Save that thought, ought to be a goodn' when we sue. Look, mom wasn't stupid. There had to have been somebody here who was normal, a way out, a link to the outside."
"Mom wasn't stupid, but after she started taking the little green and white pills, she wasn't mom anymore. And they were breaking up and we were only supposed to be here until your birthday."
Faudron felt a pain in her chest. Moren always did this. Moren cut herself too, or did; Faudron never asked if it was over with. Moren bled out a little bit here and there, driving everybody crazy when it would have been easier if she'd done it all at once. Faudron was so mad she almost told her, but she wasn't allowed to say things like that. Moren could, sometimes mom, but not her and dad. She grabbed the sun visor with the tips of her fingers, then with both hands and squeezed it as she pulled it down, noting that for all the hours of car loving that went into restoring this, the sun visor's were still made of cardboard covered in really bad vinyl that cracked at the edges in the sun. "Do you want to wait in the car?"
"No."
They parked as close as they could and waited for the last kids to get inside. The flower-covered walk pulled close to the library and wolf statue and you had to walk close-enough to touch it to get to the main steps, so no one could say they didn't know, and the back of the statue was bright and shiny, as if people touched it for good luck when they passed, years and years of people.
"Here, here watch, watch what they do," Moren said, smiling and bending over backward to polish the back of the statue with her hand.
Faudron grabbed her other wrist. "Don't you dare. I'll get in the car and leave you here."
"OK. Maybe we should buy a dog whistle on the way out. Think
they'd all run out here if we whistled.?"
"Get the door, please. I don't want to touch it after you touched that thing."
The school's front door was open; inside, the sour milk smell of an old ship filled the hallways. They walked down the hall and stopped outside the room with all the cameras.
Moren pulled out her cellphone and hit the speed dial.
"Good luck."
"I'm calling mom; it makes me feel better. Even if it's the answering service."
Faudron held her breath. There wasn't any point in knocking Moren down if she just had to call.
"Dial tone, dial tone," Moren whispered, shaking her hand in the air.
One of the telephones on Mrs. C's desk rang. Faudron pressed her back against the wall, then peaked in and pressed her back against the wall again.
Mrs. C. pressed a button on a black box. The phone was answered and her mother's voice said, "Hello."
"Mom?" Moren asked, pulling Faudron close so she could hear as she placed the phone sideways between them.
"Faudron. I want you to come home right away. It's father. There was an accident."
Moren hung up, turned the phone off and slipped it into her pocket. She pointed at Mrs. C, poking the air with her finger. "Told you she was a—"
Faudron pressed a finger to her lips before she could speak.
Moren grabbed her finger, then let it go and nodded. "It's all right," she whispered.
"High, Mrs. C," Moren said as she stepped into the room.
"Moren, what are you doing here?"
Moren made a face then looked at Faudron as she put her hand in front of Mrs. C's face. Mrs. C was blind. Faudron wanted to shout, "Stop that," but Moren had that wild look on her face and there was no point in saying stop, she'd just go.
Moren reached over and pressed the first touch screen. The last month of video footage played in fast-forward on each video terminal, showing views of the entire community. Mrs. C reached for the desk phone with her left hand but Moren placed a polished-nail on the receiver. "I'm going to tell my daddy what the Mayor, your husband that is, tried to do to me. My daddy's got a temper. Sometimes." As she spoke, she pressed record on her cell phone and got all the footage. When she was done, she touched the Rosary Tattoo. around Mrs. C's neck. "I'm going to tell the Army about you."
She had tatoo over tatoo, each darker than the next, as if at some point, the inspiration started coming from within her and they washed the ink away, and drew on her with her own black blood. "Army knows."
Faudron gave Moren an I told you so look, meaning, let's go, but Moren got the wild look in her eyes again. "Not about the wilding hours."
Mrs. C. turned her clear, blind eyes, and stared straight at Moren. "Don't know what you're talking about." But her junkie- jaundiced skin turned a different shade of death-yellow.
"Someone killed Karen. Karen was my friend."
"She just took a bad step on a bad night. People say that you can have a hard time of it, but none of us remembers, so none of us can be blamed."
"Then how do you know about the bad step on a bad night?"
"Cause that's the kind of damn thing that's gonna happen to you with that mouth of yours. I thought they already warned you about that mouth of yours." She smacked Moren's hand away, got up and pushed her to the door then shut and locked it.
"Call the cops."
"Her husband the Mayor/Sheriff?" Faudron asked.
"No the real police. The 911 police."
"You know the phone won't work."
Upstairs, lock after lock clicked shut, and down here, even the unused classroom doors turned over their locks. Faudron hadn't noticed before, but the old-fashioned fire bells at the corner of either end of the hallway and visible in the main stairs beyond hummed, as if the setting weren't on off, but ready-set-go, just to let you know that there'd be a fire some day, if you hung around long-enough.
Faudron pinched Moren as hard as she could. "Whatever."
Before Moren could dial, the fire alarm went off, far louder than a normal fire alarm, so loud Faudron's ears hurt, deep inside as if she had a cold that worked its way from her lungs to her brain and when she tried to speak, Moren kept mouthing the words, "Can't hear you". Then it stopped and all the doors that had clicked shut, clicked open.
The bells started again and they ran out the back door at the opposite end of the long hallway, setting off another alarm.
They ran from the building, passing the inside-out statue and made it to the car. It was raining again. It rained too often; this was Jersey and not the Carolinas after all, and the rain was wrong though she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Then it came to her. It was always the same temperature, always the same, well, the same rain, as if it reflected a mood, or was put there, to set a mood. Or maybe, there was something in it. "Hey, Moren."
"I didn't make that bell go off."
"No. Can they make it rain?"
"Yeah. In Scooby Do they used to drop dry ice in the clouds."
"No, can they make it rain like this, turn it on and off when they want? Can they make it cloudy and can they stick a thermometer in the air, and tell the air to be that temperature?"
"Well, David Ickes would tell you yes; everybody else would pretty much tell you no. Dad would 'a said it's possible, but so costly, why would they, and if they did, how the heck could they keep it quiet? Just like that. That's how he'd say it. Just like that."
She looked at Moren's wet face. She'd mussed most of her makeup, making her look far younger, and revealing the flawed chin that made her look like a chipmunk with big braces.
And did Karen have a retainer? Had they spent money on her right up to the end, because Faudron was suddenly sure that it wasn't a too wild night they had let her out into, but a sacrifice they had prepared, even lovingly.
She scanned the sky. It was like a tape playing over and over. Something made it rain. She was sure of it.
Moren rolled down the window to shout something to the kids filing out of the school.
Faudron pressed the driver's side button and rolled all the windows down accidentally, then up. "Don't make enemies."
When Faudron pulled out, the Mayor was standing near the statue but looked away when she stared at him, but when they passed he shouted, "Silver water's, a terrible thing girls, ain't it?"
"What's he mean?" Faudron asked.
"He knows about Mrs. Rochambeau."
"Don't get you."
"They ain't afraid of Rau; they're afraid of her," Moren said.
"Forget it, we're gone."
"Mom?"
Faudron pointed her finger right at Moren's nose, barely driving the car with one hand. "You're four...teen. You can't do anything; you think you can but you can't. Whatever, there I said it for you."
Moren giggled, friendly faced and tapped the dashboard, then played with the radio, but got only static. "You'll never be mom."
***
Faudron stopped the car when they got to the main gate just outside of town, put the car in park, got out and lifted the gate without looking at the guard. He had a bland look on his face and didn't move. Faudron felt the sweat in her hairline, though it was chilly-enough for a windbreaker. She smiled and waived. She remembered that you could get away with a lot at an Army base if you were cute and harmless and moved really slow and natural. She was terrified he'd yell stop, or worse, whisper stop, or worse say her name, but she forced her legs to move and she made it.
The mountain started to give off at this point, the view, below the clouds, maybe another mile off, was sunny and went into forever. She knew it was her imagination, but she tried not to breathe as if they'd put something in the air that made people forget to want to leave.
She got back in and drove. Up ahead, the road cut into the mountain with neat blast lines in the rock at either side. An old-style barbed-wire fence stood at the top, before it, on the undulating ledge, stood silver-framed boxes piled in rows of two, like etagere's, so close to the edge the
y might fall on the road. Each had a tag in big block letters that read ORDINANCE, with a meaningless serial number. Each had four mechanical legs folded under them it like dogs.
A half mile later they passed two armored-personnel carriers with the engines running, but they couldn't tell if anyone was inside for the darkened windows.
A mile down the road, everything opened-up; the road grew wider, edged by old-fashioned, stone walls. They came to a farmhouse with an abandoned-train station across the road, with a sign outside that read Antiques. Halogen lights hung from aluminum polls around the station and the access road on the other side of the parking lot, lead to a well-lit, freshly paved road that must go to the highway. In the distance, to the west, the sky was lit as car's headlights echoed off the tarmac.
The world, they cheered. The sky was clear and blue. Faudron counted the days, it had always been raining or threatening to rain, which was worse. She stopped the car, got out and tried the payphone on the station's wall. Faudron didn't have any change and had to use her phone card and though it was a crazy idea, she handed Moren her cellphone and mouthed the words. "Call."
Moren, always organized and thinking along with her, sat down on the curb and had a pencil and pad out before the payphone operator had even figured out the number at Mt Sinai-Philadelphia. "Blah-blah-blah," Faudron said, holding her hand over the mouthpiece as she gestured for Moren to dial the number she'd jotted down.
Faudron got through to a woman at the hospital. "There never was a patient named Loren Falkirk."
"You sure?"
The woman hung up.
Moren placed her cellphone close to Faudron's ear as she got through, scanning the tree line and the old telephone lines that followed the dead railroad tracks. "Yes, Mrs. Lauren Falkirk. Patient number 9990099. She checked in and checked out," another voice on another line said.
They stared at each other, holding hands when Moren hit the speed dial for home. "Just for fun."
The line made unusual noises as if they had tapped into a strange exchange in a strange land; if the number had been Waverly 7, Faudron wouldn't have been surprised.
