She had managed to maneuver her way to the rear of Oliver’s SUV when she scented the new people. Now she looked back to where the rest of the group still stood in front of the garage. She could hear Matt’s voice, raised in excitement, and watched as he pointed at something she couldn’t see. A few steps away from the brick-red vehicle afforded her a better view.
A large mobile home was parked along the far fence. Nowen could see that it looked in good shape except for two flat tires. Tuck dropped Zoe’s arm and motioned to Oliver to join Matt. The two men brought their weapons up and approached the vehicle. Behind them, Tuck drew his rifle from its familiar position on his back.
Suddenly, the door to the RV swung open and an elderly white man in faded overalls stepped out. He held a small handgun. Oliver and Matt quickly brought their shotguns to bear on him.
“Drop it! Drop your weapon!” Matt’s words were weedy and nervous. The man raised a palsied hand to his wrinkle-seamed face, cupping one ear.
“Drop your goddamn weapon, fucker! Now!” Oliver shouted. Zoe, Lennon, and the Roberts backed away to the relative safety of the camper. Nowen tensed at the anger in his voice, twisting her wrists against the cuffs as her the fine hairs on the back of her neck rose. Imminent violence flavored the air and she drank it in like the clearest water.
The elderly man took a hesitant step forward, still cupping one ear. Behind him someone moved in the gloomy interior. Matt, closest to the RV, screamed “Gun!” in a thin voice on the edge of hysteria. The loud report of a shotgun shattered the air, and half of the old man’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and brains. His body dropped to the ground, and someone screamed. Nowen couldn’t tell who had screamed or who had fired, and now the situation was devolving into chaos. Tuck was shouting at his men, and his men were shouting at the RV. The Roberts, Zoe, and Lennon stood perfectly still, their backs to where Nowen was.
She took a step forward, straining against the cuffs, a deep growl building in her chest, and then she realized that no one was watching her. She reined the wolf in, not without some difficulty, and ran.
She darted down the right side of the garage and around to the back. More gunshots came from behind her as she ran. A maze of cars spread out behind the garage, some stacked two and three high. Dead weeds beat against her legs as she ran to the back of the lot. She looked down both sides of the fence. The wire continued smoothly to the left until it turned and headed to the front of the lot. Far down the right side, however, she thought she spied a small gap where the fencing had pulled free of the ground. She took off in that direction.
Nowen had made it no more than a few feet when a Rev lunged out from behind a crumpled wreck of a tractor-trailer. She was in an advanced state of decay, most of the flesh gone from her lower face and her dirty-grey work shirt torn across the chest to reveal protruding rib bones. There was still enough strength in her wasted hands to clamp onto Nowen’s right arm and pull it to her mouth.
Nowen went with the motion, pushing the Rev back and then down to the high grass. The Rev snarled and she snarled back as she wrenched her arm loose from its bony grasp. She straddled the thrashing body and raised her cuffed hands high in the air before bringing her balled fists down with all her strength onto the grey-green forehead of the Rev.
Pain lanced up her arms as the crack of bone filled her ears. The Rev threw her head back and forth in her endless hunger, trying again and again to reach some part of Nowen. She pressed down harder on the thin chest beneath her and raised her hands high to slam them down on the Rev’s skull again and again. The bone finally shattered beneath her blows. Rotten black brains and fluids spewed forth. She rolled off the corpse and sprawled in the grass, trying to catch her breath.
“Nowen!” Zoe’s scream brought her to her feet. True fear had colored the other woman’s voice. Nowen looked toward the garage for just a moment, then turned back to the fence and ran for the loose piece she thought she had seen. Reaching the spot she saw that her guess was correct. Where this section of fencing met the ground a piece, about a foot long, had been shoved inward. A worn path in the grass showed that animals had used this in the past.
Nowen dropped to her knees and grabbed the fence. She pulled and, with a shower of dirt, the wire came free. She readjusted her grip and tugged again, feeling the fence slowly bend upwards.
“Nowen!” Zoe screamed again, and at the abject terror in her voice Nowen paused. “Come back! Please!” Zoe called, and then Tuck’s voice rang out.
“I know you can hear me. If you’re not back in two minutes I will kill this young woman.”
Nowen sank back on her haunches. She looked through the fence, where grass and trees stretched out for at least a mile before giving way to modest houses. Just go. She clenched her hands tightly on the cold wire. Just go! These people mean nothing to you, right? Isn’t that what you said? Her breathing was harsh in her ears. Look, freedom! Freedom, and then Exeter. And then...
“Nowen?” A hopeless, wavering cry from Zoe. Damn it all to hell. Nowen let go of the fence and stood. She turned her back on the grassland and starting walking.
When she came around the corner of the garage Matt grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over to where Tuck stood. The familiar group of captives had been joined by four new people. Three were women and one was a man, none older than the mid-thirties. The women all shared a similar appearance, with dark hair and skin, and similar facial features. The single man had an Asian cast to his features, and stood a little way apart from the women.
Lennon and Mr. Roberts were on their knees in the rough grass. Tuck stood behind them, a shotgun held in one hand and resting on his shoulder. Matt brought her to a stop a few feet from this strange tableau, and Oliver stepped up behind her, holding her still in his grasp.
Nowen and Tuck stared at each other. His face was perfectly blank, but in his ice-blue eyes she could see the cold flames of his wrath. He turned away from her to address his captives.
“I do not like to repeat myself, so I will say this once and only once. I am in charge. You will do what I say. These are my men, Oliver and Matt. You will do what they say. I will protect you and take you with me to a safe place, but only if you do as I say. Any attempt at insurrection will not be tolerated. Any attempt to fight me or my men will not be tolerated. Any attempt to run away will not be tolerated. Lest you think I’m joking I will demonstrate for you how serious I am.” He pointed at Mr. Roberts. “This man attempted to take a weapon from one of my men.”
Mr. Roberts was pale as a ghost. Beads of sweat ran down his face as he looked back over his shoulder. “That-that-that’s a damn lie!” he stammered. “I just f-f-fell against him, that’s all! Those women were r-running everywhere. They bumped me! You kn-know that’s the truth-” The roar of the shotgun cut off his words as a bloody gaping hole bloomed in his chest. A look of bewilderment crossed his face as he slumped forward into the dry grass.
His wife shrieked, a siren wail that climbed into the sky, and her daughters shrieked with her. The three strange women huddled together, weeping loudly. Lennon’s face was speckled with blood. He raised his eyes from the ground and looked at Nowen, and there was something in his gaze she couldn’t read. Tuck held a hand up for silence, and when it didn’t come he fired a shot into the air. A frightened quiet fell on the junkyard, broken only by Mrs. Roberts’ gasping sobs. Tuck moved behind Lennon and raised the shotgun to the kneeling man’s head. Tuck pointed at Nowen. “This woman attempted to run away. She needs to be taught a lesson.”
“Then teach me a lesson. Don’t take it out on them.” Nowen’s words dropped hard and cold from her mouth.
“I thought these people didn’t matter to you.”
“Leave them alone.”
Tuck cocked his head to one side. “Beg me.” he said in his clipped voice.
“What?”
“Beg me to spare his life.”
The wolf ached to tear this shorter man’s throat out, to watch the blood arc into t
he air, to leave the carcass for the flies and worms. “Please don’t hurt him.” Nowen said through gritted teeth.
Tuck shook his head slowly. “That didn’t sound sincere. Try it again.”
She took a deep breath and unclenched her jaw. “Please don’t hurt Lennon.”
“Oh, that was much better. Still...let me hear you beg me, on your knees.”
In the circle of dead silence in which they stood Nowen looked first at Tuck, and then at Lennon. The young man’s grey eyes followed her as she slowly sank to her knees in the dry and withered grass. She sank to her haunches, resting her cuffed hands in her lap, and looked only at Lennon as she spoke. “Please. I’m begging you. Don’t kill him.”
Tuck seemed to ponder this for a moment. “Hmm. No.” The roar of the weapon rung out. The top of the young man’s head disappeared in a mist of red bone shards, and his limp body collapsed next to Mr. Roberts. Thin wisps of smoke rose from what remained of his black, curly hair. Droplets of his blood splattered over Nowen’s face.
Amid the screams and chaos that followed she caught Tuck’s gaze and held it, unblinking. The wolf raged behind her eyes, driven to the point of madness by the smell of fresh blood and flesh, and her rage stoked the wolf further. Only by the thinnest of margins was she able to keep control. Perhaps Tuck saw something of this struggle, because he blinked first.
Nowen was made to drag the three bodies to the back of the junkyard lot. Matt and Oliver took over the RV, scrounging two new tires and working on the engine to get it up and running again. After a meager dinner of canned beans and potted meat, the captives were divided up. The new people, guarded by Oliver, went back to their mobile home. Zoe, Mrs. Roberts, and the twin girls went back into the small camper. Nowen’s hands were cuffed behind her back again, the metal biting deep into her wrists. With obvious pleasure Oliver locked one end of a heavy chain around her neck and fastened the other end to the rear axle of the camper.
She spent an uncomfortable night outside. No other Revs had been found in a sweep of the junkyard, but the night was bitterly cold and she wore only jeans and a sweatshirt. When sleep finally came it was thin and fitful, and in her dreams Lennon died over and over again. She was woken near dawn by the sound of Zoe banging on the camper door and screaming for help. She kept shouting Mrs. Roberts’ name over and over, and when Matt finally staggered over to unlock the door, the rich scent of death poured out of the camper.
Then
Nowen stood in the cold and dark of the small cellar. Tremors racked her body, both from the freezing temperature and the aftereffects of wresting control from the wolf. How long have I been gone this time? Her night vision bloomed in the dark, and in the wash of faded colors she round the pile of clothes she always left down here. She snagged an oversized robe and wrapped it around herself as she headed for the way out, a ladder along the right side of the cellar that led to a trapdoor in the bedroom closet.
The shock of seeing the Revs at the shed and the adrenaline from the fight to escape the Rev’s hold had brought clarity back to the human part of her. The control that had felt so sure and strong two weeks ago had proven to be tenuous at best, and every day had become a test of will. All too often, the wolf won.
The living room was cold. Ghost clouds escaped from her mouth on each breath, to linger only a moment in the air. She was too tired to go back out in the raging storm and turn on the generator. She collapsed on the couch and pulled a couple of heavy quilts over her body.
She automatically looked for the strange butterfly on the ceiling but it was too faint to be seen, even with her night vision. She turned onto one side and pulled the quilts over her head, creating a small pocket of air that her breath quickly warmed. In this small bit of heat and surrounded by the wild blizzard outside, Nowen thought.
Being the wolf is so much easier. There is freedom in the wolf. There is speed, and strength, and cunning. A memory of a moment from the past week drifted through her mind. The moon had been two days from full, and had poured its silver light across the prairie. It carved a path through the snow dunes, a path just for the wolf, and she we ran with the sheer joy that came from living just in the moment. The snow from her passage hung in the still air like icy comet tails. She we stretched her body to the fullest, jumping over and through the snow, snapping at flurries, startling a ferret from its hiding place and chasing it for a few feet before passing it by.
So much easier. Nothing matters. Nothing. Who am I? Doesn’t matter. What caused the Revs? Doesn’t matter. Is there anyone still alive in the world? Doesn’t matter. There was something growing in her mind, something unknown, a strange plant from which would bloom a flower. But what kind? Poisonous or pure? Thorny or velvet-smooth? It was still a bud, and she turned away from it for now.
The wind blew even stronger for a few moments, shaking the very frame of the house itself. She listened to its dark voice and wanted to go join it in the night. With an effort she concentrated on the tangle of her thoughts.
The wolf was not caged easily. Sometimes quiescent, sometimes calm, but more often a raging presence that strove to break free. Nowen would let her attention slip, just a little, and find black fur coiling up her arms or the bones in her face shifting under the skin. With each of these incursions the wolf grew stronger and she grew weaker until one frosty morning Nowen found herself outside, standing naked in ankle-deep snow, and realized with horror that she had changed in her sleep.
Her desire to fight for her humanity began to ebb. This last week she had given the wolf free rein, losing track of time and location and herself. And why not? The flower-thought was opening. Carefully she teased it from the soil. Why not? What is there for me here? The world that was is dead. Any clue to who I was is dead. For all I know, every last person on the planet is dead. Dark petals unfurled, and there it was: Why not just stay the wolf? With this thought spreading through her mind she drifted to sleep.
She runs down an endless alley. Thick dust hangs in the air, a strange fog that occludes her sight. Cookie-cutter houses stare aghast with broken windows and open doors at her passing. A roaring like a tsunami follows her and she spares a single glance over her shoulder to see hundreds of thousands of the risen dead. A mindless mass of yellow eyes and mold-colored skin, gnashing teeth and clawing hands, racing down the alley after her. They were tireless, and she was tiring. There was no hope.
A patch of blue and green opens at the end of the alley. She forces her weary legs on and on, and finally she stumbles free of the dusty fog. The shrieks of the horde cut off with a suddenness that is almost as disturbing as the noise itself. The alley is gone. She stands in a field of rich green grass beneath a sky so brilliantly blue it hurts her eyes. Someone else is there, too.
A woman stands just a few feet away, a woman with blonde hair, wearing shapeless light blue clothing. The other woman has her back turned, and she approaches this strange figure slowly. There is something familiar about this person, something she should know. She lays a hand on the blue-covered shoulder, turning the other woman around.
The woman has no eyes. Maggots spill from the empty sockets. Black blood pours from her nose, and when the woman opens her mouth to speak bottle-green flies swarm free.
“I waited for you.”
Nowen screamed herself awake, cold sweat wrapping around her. The first faint morning light was seeping through the curtains as she dragged the quilts closer around her and pulled herself upright. Her heat thudded sickly in her chest. Cold wisps of her breathing shrouded her head.
Frantic thoughts raced through her head. How could I have forgotten? Is it me, whoever I am, that so willfully shed the one person who was there for me? Hell, the only person I know? Someone I consider a... friend? Or was it the wolf?
Lambent, accusing eyes opened in her mind. No, I have only myself to blame. I have to go back. Why? Obligation, or loyalty? Is there any difference?
Nowen rose from the couch and crossed to the large bay window. She drew aside one of
the heavy curtains and looked out on the rolling, snow-covered prairie, eye-searingly white in the rising sun. A few thin, flat-bottomed clouds skimmed across the sky. Far off on the horizon a herd of pronghorn bounded through the snow. Her heart ached at the thought of leaving, and a feeling of agreement came from the wolf.
Wolf, you need to work with me, now. We won’t be gone long. We need to find our lost pack member, and bring her home.
There is one last thing to stay human for. Jamie.
The wolf looked at her, a questioning look.
If we can’t find her? Then I really have no reason to stay human, do I?
Chapter Seventeen
Now
“You killed him.”
The smell of blood was thick in the camper. The bodies of Mrs. Roberts and her daughters had been removed and dumped in the junkyard, but the blood-soaked bed coverings had been left behind. The weapon Mrs. Roberts had used to slice her children’s throats and then her own had been found in her hand - a small piece of stiff plastic she had pried from a cabinet’s decorative molding, jagged enough to rip through soft flesh.
Zoe sat on the small seat that had been Nowen’s. Nowen sat on the floor. The wolf seemed to understand to understand the seriousness of the situation and was calm.
“You killed him.” Zoe said again. She hunched forward, her hands clasped together in front of her. The ever-present anger raged in her eyes.
“I know.”
“Don’t try to deny it! You killed - wait. What did you say?”
Nowen looked steadily at Zoe. “I killed Lennon. I know that.”
The teenager leaned back, as if she couldn’t stand to be any nearer Nowen than she had to be. “How nice of you to admit it! He liked you, and trusted you, and the first chance you had you ran off and left him! Left us!”
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