They drove through the night. Even with the massive blade attached to the front of the truck the snow pack made for difficult driving, and more than once Nowen, from her perch near the door, could hear the metallic screeching as some vehicle was shoved aside. The captives made themselves as comfortable as they could in the cramped camper, with the Roberts family sharing the bed and Zoe and Lennon on the floor. Nowen kept her seat at the front and was left alone by the others.
It was nearing mid-day when the truck and camper shuddered to a stop. Nowen jerked awake from a light sleep brought on by the heat of in the camper and the quiet of being ignored. There came the slamming on the door and the call to step back.
The door opened on Matt and Oliver. Both of the men carried their shotguns. “Ok, we need some volunteers for a mission! Step on out now!” Matt called.
There was a moment of stillness from inside, and then Nowen watched as Zoe and Lennon rose from their seats on the floor. There was an air of resignation about them. Behind them, the married couple studiously kept their eyes turned away.
Nowen shot to her feet and stepped in front of Zoe. “I’ll do it.” she said and headed for the doorway.
Oliver raised his weapon. He wore the mirrored sunglasses but Nowen could still see some of the bruising beneath his eyes. “You’re not going anywhere, bitch. Get back aside.”
She looked the big man up and down, then slowly, deliberately, turned her attention on Matt. “You asked for volunteers.”
The beefy blonde gripped his shotgun nervously and glanced over his shoulder at the pick-up. Nowen studied his body language - this one was strictly middle-of-the-pack, she decided, not a danger but not to be dismissed entirely. Next to him Oliver took a step forward, his impotent rage oozing out of every pore. She watched him from the corner of her eye. Just a little closer, and I can grab that gun.
“Uh, I’m not sure that Tuck wants you leavin’ the camper just yet.” Matt said.
“Then go ask him.”
“Well, see, that’s - I mean, I’m sure he’d be mighty appreciative of your wantin’ to help, but-”
“Goddamnit, I said get back in there!” Oliver roared suddenly. Beads of sweat ran down his bald head. Again she ignored him, seemingly keeping all her attention on Matt. Oliver took another step forward and she tensed; he was just out of reach but she could goad him closer, she knew. The weapon, and freedom, was so close now-
“That’s enough.” Tuck said in his calm voice as he walked into view and the moment to act was gone, evaporating like a soap bubble. Oliver, hearing the voice of his master, stepped back into position. The slight leader looked up at the camper door and pointed at Nowen. “You - get down here.”
She jumped the few feet to the ground and moved a little away from the truck. Behind her Tuck was telling Zoe and Lennon to come out of the camper, and she took this opportunity to look around.
They were at an intersection of their highway and two other roads. The steep, stark hills of her journey yesterday had been smoothed down and covered in numerous stands of trees. The sun rose through a perfect blue and cloudless sky, and the temperature was climbing rapidly as evidenced by the disappearing snow. A few brave patches of grass dotted the weathered landscape
A large combination gas station/garage sat in the paved triangle of the intersection roads. A number of vehicles, the majority of them with Colorado license plates, sat in the parking lot where their owners had left them, surrounded by oily puddles of water. Liberated by the melting snow, damp paper danced among the cans and bottles that had spilled from trash cans. A storm-battered sign tilted atop a tall metal pole; black painted letters spelled out ‘Red’s Gas & Garage’. A couple of windows had been broken in the gas station, and as Nowen listened absently to Tuck barking orders she studied the darkness inside the station where something seemed to be moving.
The sound of her name drew her attention back to the group of people by the camper. Tuck motioned her over, and she rejoined them as he continued speaking.
“Oliver, you’re on gas duty. Matt, let out other guests out for a break. Just keep your gun on one of the girls and the parents will behave. First, though, we’ll do some spring cleaning.” He looked at Zoe and Lennon. “You two will help us check for dead-heads.”
Lennon folded his arms across his chest. “How?” he asked, belligerently.
“You will approach the buildings, making as much noise as possible. If any dead-heads are around and mobile, they should respond to that, and we’ll take them out. You’ll be perfectly safe.”
“And if I don’t want to ‘help’, what will you do? Shoot me?” The young man’s tone was sarcastic.
“No. I’ll let Oliver have some fun with your young friend there, and make you watch. Then I’ll shoot you. Not to kill, just to cripple. And then I’ll dump you among the first group of dead-heads we find.” During his speech Tuck’s voice was placid and even, and this conveyed the seriousness of his threat more than any bluster would have. Lennon’s face paled beneath the light-brown skin, and he shifted his gaze from Tuck’s face. After a few moments of silence Tuck spoke again. “Any other questions? No? Then let’s get this done-”
Nowen raised her handcuffed hands. “I have a question. What do I get to do?”
Those pale, pale eyes looked at her. Without warning his hand shot out and slapped her hard across the face. Nowen stumbled from the force of the blow. Off-balance, she couldn’t avoid the next hit from his open hand, and the next thing she knew she was falling.
From her sprawled position on the snow-damp ground she looked up at him. Her right cheek and jaw throbbed. The wolf’s eager eyes opened.
“Get up.” Tuck said.
Nowen bit down on her lip and struggled to her feet. No one offered to help. When she stood facing the shorter man again she locked her amber eyes on his pallid face and waited for what she knew would come next. Tuck swung at her again but she this time she was ready, swaying beyond the reach of his hand and then moving inside the arc of his arm. One quick step brought her almost nose-to-nose with him. She spit in his face.
Someone gasped in horror behind her as she stepped back from Tuck, watching as he wiped her spit and blood from his face. Slowly he removed his shades and fixed his pale ice-blue eyes on her. The crunch of gravel and snow from behind Nowen alerted her but it was too late, and pain erupted from her back where someone had hit her.
She dropped to her knees, and the wolf surged free.
Or tried to. Nowen would not scream in front of this man, and she chewed the inside of her mouth bloody as sharp-bladed agony raced up her arms. With the handcuffs on she couldn’t change, couldn’t break the metal and allow the wolf to come out. Aching tremors settled in her shoulders. Someone gripped her arm tightly and pulled her up to her feet.
Tuck looked at her. “I don’t like to discipline people, but I will not have disruption in this group. You may not care what happens to your fellow travelers but I would wager that you do care what happens to you.” He turned his back on her and addressed the others, who were all standing wide-mouthed. “You have your orders. Do them.”
Zoe and Lennon walked toward the gas station, shouting and clapping their hands. Matt and Oliver followed about fifteen feet behind, weapons at the ready, while Nowen stood next to Tuck at the front of the truck and watched. The young woman, her long ponytail waving in the breeze, scooped up a couple of beer bottles and threw them against the wall of the station. The glass shattered into a thousand fragments, falling to the pavement like a polluted rain. Lennon followed her lead and picked up several good-sized rocks. He was pulling his arm back in preparation for a pitch when Zoe stopped him. Her words carried to the others easily. “Shh! I hear something!”
Everyone held their breath and even the gentle breeze died away. In the deep sudden quiet all of them could hear the moaning of the undead from inside the building.
Lennon looked over his shoulder at Tuck. “Now what?”
“Open the door and d
raw them outside. Easier to kill them that way.”
His response came in an angry whisper. “Open the door? Are you crazy?”
Tuck’s answer was as calm as Lennon’s was furious. “Now, Mr. Lennon. I don’t like to ask twice, nor do I like to threaten twice.”
Zoe grabbed the young man’s arm. “Come on, let’s just get this over with. I’ll open the door, you draw them out.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just marched over to the door and grasped the handle. “Ready?” she said, and Lennon gave a sharp nod.
Nowen clenched her hands into fists as the glass door was pulled open and several Revs stumbled out. Unconsciously she strained against the handcuffs, and the wolf responded to the adrenaline coursing through her body, shifting restlessly deep inside her mind. One part of her mind turned to quieting the wolf; the rest of her studied the first unfrozen Revs she had seen since Exeter.
These had been unwitting captives inside the station, maybe for months, and their enforced starvation showed. The mold-colored skin was drawn tight over their skeletons and their eyes were so dark a yellow as to be nearly gold. On some of them the skin had sloughed off, and grey bone and tendons were revealed.
There were just three or four of the Revs at first, but as Lennon shouted and clapped more came lurching through the door until there were ten of them, the sight of their first live prey in who knew how long adding speed to their thawing joints and shuffling steps. Their eyes were fixed on Lennon; Zoe, standing perfectly still behind the door, might as well have been invisible.
The young man increased his steps and glanced back at the armed men. Matt and Oliver made no move to raise their guns. Nowen could see Lennon’s eyes widen with fear. “Hey! What the bloody hell are you waiting for?” The two men didn’t respond, and Lennon switched his gaze to Tuck. “Do something, damn it!”
“You can run.” Tuck said, and Nowen heard slight amusement in his voice.
“I’m not leaving Zoe, you bastard!”
Nowen felt her stomach clench; the Revs were moving faster, urged on by Lennon’s voice, and the young man was too distracted to notice. She trembled on the edge of action, a heartbeat away from lunging forward and attacking the Revs herself, even though both her and the wolf knew it would be suicide.
There was the slightest movement from beside her, an infinitesimal shift in Tuck’s position, and Nowen realized with a deep sense of truth that he was testing her. Why? What is he up to? She had no answer for herself, but the wolf knew that she could show no weakness before this man. She relaxed every muscle in her body instantly, faking a yawn to cover the deep breath she drew in.
She could feel the moment that Tuck turned his attention away from her. “Get down!” he shouted at Lennon. The young man dropped like a stone, and Matt and Oliver stepped up and started shooting. The blasts of the shotguns hammered the air, startling groups of birds from the trees around them. When it was finished Lennon lay half-buried under a pile of bodies. He raised his head and looked at Nowen, his shocked eyes very white in his blood-splattered face.
The group spent a couple of hours at the station. Zoe led the shell-shocked Lennon away to clean him up. Oliver siphoned gas from some of the cars into containers, Matt led the Roberts outside for a bathroom break, and then Tuck had everyone but Nowen and himself raid the gas station for supplies. Inside the camper there wasn’t much talk, but Nowen could feel the others looking at her. She did her best to pay them no attention, turning the thought that Tuck wanted something from her, or wanted her for something, over and over in her mind.
Then
Nowen sat on the worn couch in a pool of bright sun and studied her hands. She concentrated on the long fingers, the smooth reddish-brown skin, the bumps of the knuckles, the uneven fingernails. The world around her faded away as she focused on her fingers. Then, slowly, fine black hairs rose from the skin and crept toward the nails, which were themselves changing, becoming thick and long. As the black fur covered her hand to the wrist she felt an unexpected burst of delight. I control it - it doesn’t control me. I can do this. I CAN do this.
The wild animal inside seemed to laugh and suddenly her body was twitching and shaking all over. Pain lanced through her jaw as new teeth shoved up from her gums. The black fur rippled up her arms as they changed shape too, shortening and widening. Joints cracked and popped and she fell forward off the couch, landing on her hands and knees.
NO!! Nowen drove one warped fist into her side. The bright fire from her broken ribs burned through her body, and the wolf retreated. She collapsed on the floor, panting harshly. Wild eyes watched her from deep inside, accusing and angry. I don’t like you either. It’s your fault I’m here. The amber lights blinked out and she was alone in her head.
With a groan she eased over onto back, her eyes automatically finding the lopsided butterfly on the ceiling. Standing on the porch a week ago, watching her body change before her eyes, she had believed it all a hallucination, a waking dream brought on by pain. But the sudden, unnerving sense of someone - no, some thing - of another consciousness seeing through her eyes, hearing through her ears was all too real.
Nowen had staggered inside the house and to the couch, where she had swallowed a handful of aspirin before sprawling on the tattered cushions. She’d closed her eyes and looked inward to see a large black wolf staring back. Who are you? she’d asked. In response the animal had lunged forward, looming in her mind’s eye as big as the world. She could feel her body trembling on the edge of change as the wolf strove to spring free. With a strength of will she’d not known she possessed Nowen had shoved the wild thing back, creating in her mind a cage of iron bars that kept the wolf from roaming free.
Over the next few days she’d found that the cage wasn’t as strong as she’d hoped. A near-constant battle had been waged between herself and the wolf for dominance. Each night she’d fall into a sleep that was almost as exhausting as the days were. She would jolt awake every hour or so, terrified that while she slept the animal had come free. In the ragged dreams that came to her in those un-restful minutes of slumber bits and pieces of the past arranged themselves to make a picture, incomplete but still informative.
Nowen dreamed of Jamie telling her about the dog bite on her leg and the cryptic words written on her arm. The memories of sifting through the myriad scents that filled the air inside and outside the hospital. The night that everyone died on the second floor, the night the lights died also and how the darkness had fled before her vision. And she dreamed again of that last desperate flight from the Revs, leaving Jamie behind, the dead crushing her beneath their weight as their teeth sunk into her flesh. The wolf is how I survived. She’d woken with these words repeating over and over in her head.
Nowen had found the idea of being able of the wolf surprisingly easy to accept; after all, in a world where the dead walked and outnumbered the living, what was such a big thing about being a shape-changer? How she’d become one, who had made her this way, were there others like her out there - for every little piece of herself that was revealed more seemed to disappear, and the unanswered questions continued to pile up.
Wearily she pulled herself up. Movement by the front window caught her attention and she walked slowly over to it, one hand pressed to her aching side. She pulled back the thin curtain and found herself face-to-face with a Rev.
This one had been a young man, probably in his early twenties. He still wore the clothes he’d had on the last day of his life, but exposure to the weather was turning the jeans and hooded sweatshirt into rags. His vacant yellow eyes roamed over the window glass and he pawed softly at the barrier, the tips of his fingers showing bone where skin had rotted away. Nowen watched the Rev calmly, noting the damage that was occurring as his body decayed. His face was the familiar blue-grey color of moldy bread. A flap of skin had peeled back from his forehead, revealing cracked, dirty bone. He looked desiccated, the thin flesh stretched taut across the angular skull, blackened teeth bared in a tight-lipped grin.
&n
bsp; The Rev didn’t seem to see her, she realized. His limited attention might have been drawn by the flash of sunlight off the window or the wind rustling through the dead grass. Behind him she could see a group of Revs, four or five all together, making their steady, staggering way along the highway. The watcher at her window noticed the group and lurched away to join them.
On her second day here she had first seen the Revs moving up and down the highway, lonely wanderers on a journey beyond her understanding. The largest group she had seen had been about twenty, most of them dressed in some type of military uniform. It had taken them the better part of the day to cross the field of vision offered by the window. She wondered how they were still alive, or whatever state of being they were in, with prey surely less available in this lonely country.
Now, the weather was getting colder each day, although so far there had been no snow. Nowen saw less and less of the Revs moving around now as hunger or the cold slowed down them. Or killed them, if I’m that lucky, she thought now as she watched the single Rev join the others. She went through the kitchen and out the back door, pausing to grab a bottle of water as she did so. She stood on the porch, sipping water and looking around.
The fresh water hadn’t died on her, though she still kept an extra supply ready. She still had food, although she was getting tired of canned carrots and beets. The house she was staying in was set off by itself, but she had seen several other houses within a half-mile radius. She was determined to check them for supplies as soon as her ribs healed a little more.
A loud shriek startled her out of her reverie, and she looked up to see two large feathered shapes tangling together high over her head. As the hawks fought one of them dropped something that plummeted through the air to land almost at her feet. She stooped to look at it.
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