Red Rider's Hood

by Neal Shusterman

  I crossed through Abject End Park, an overgrown no-man’s-land that divided our part of town from the Canyons, then crossed over into that awful, dead place. Street after street of dead factories with broken, soulless windows looked out over burned-out cars, which leaned like shipwrecks on the curb.

  I rechecked the address on the envelope and counted the building numbers past a forgotten linen factory to a little church on a corner, which seemed completely out of place. The church’s paint had peeled down to the warping wood grain, and like everything else in the Canyons, it looked like no one had been here for years. My mama didn’t like dead churches. “There’s nothing more unholy than abandoned holy ground,” she once said.

  Sending me here was a joke, of course—it had to be. I could just imagine Cedric laughing his head off about it. I knocked on the door, counted to three, and turned to leave, already plotting the most direct path out of the godforsaken canyons. Then, as I crossed the street, I heard the sound of creaking hinges. I turned to see a figure in black standing just inside the open door. My heart missed a beat.

  “Are you a Wolf?” said a girl’s voice.

  “Uh…yeah,” I said.

  “She says you can come in.”

  She, I thought. She, who?

  The girl at the door was about as inviting as the Grim Reaper on Good Friday, so I wasn’t in a hurry to hang with her or any of her Goth friends. I took my time crossing back to the church, hoping I could put together enough of the loose pieces of this situation to figure out what this was all about.

  Wait…I thought. Goth girls in a ruined church? Could Cedric have sent me on an errand to the Wolves’ only rival gang in town?

  I reached the door, but didn’t really feel like crossing the threshold, so I just held out the envelope. “Here.”

  The girl stood in shadows so dim, I couldn’t see much of her face. She didn’t reach for the envelope.

  “Didn’t you hear me? She said you can come in.”

  “What if I don’t feel like it?”

  “She doesn’t care what you feel like.”

  There was no doubt in my mind now. I knew who they were. “Are you…the Crypts?”

  “If you have to ask, then you don’t deserve an answer,” she said. I wish Cedric had warned me that he was sending me down the throat of a rival gang.

  “Her patience grows thin,” said the ghoulie-girl in the shadows.

  Against my better judgment I went in. Seems this summer was just full of things that were against my better judgment. The inside of the church was as bleak as the outside, filled with crumbling pews beneath windows covered in layer after layer of boards. A few stray votive candles cast the only light in the dreary space, and the place was even mustier than Troll Bridge Hollow, if that was possible. The door closed behind me. The creepy girl who had let me in must have slunk away into some dark corner—and in this place every corner was dark.

  There was a smell beyond the waxy scent of the candles—something unpleasant that I couldn’t name—but whatever it was, it made my neck hairs stand on end. At the front of the church, where the pulpit once stood, was another girl in black, but her dress was nothing like the wrinkled cotton the girl at the door wore. It was the kind of silky, slinky dress you might wear to a fancy ball, but I don’t think she was going anywhere. She stood there in the spot like she owned the place. Not just the place, but the Canyons themselves—and being the leader of the Crypts, I guess she did. I approached her.

  “Cedric sent you,” she said, more a statement than a question. “I’ve been waiting for you.” Her voice was both powerful and musical. Commanding, yet soothing. It was the type of voice that could lull you to sleep. Just listening to her made my defenses relax, like some strange reflex deep down inside me.

  “Yeah, I got a letter for you,” I said. As I got closer I could see the strange accessories of her outfit. Odd white earrings dangled like icicles from her lobes. A black, spiked bracelet was wrapped around each of her wrists. She was African-American, and yet oddly pale at the same time. Her skin didn’t have that healthy chocolate tone that my grandfather’s had had. Instead, her skin was almost purple: the color of a bruise. I handed the envelope to her. She took it with her long fingers. Her nails were painted the same color as her skin, looking like roaches on the end of her fingers. Rather than opening the envelope, she took a long look at me and said in that deep musical voice. “You’re not a true Wolf. I can smell it; you reek of mortality.”

  “That’s not your business,” I told her. “That’s between me and Cedric.”

  “Fair enough.” Using a fingernail as a letter opener, she sliced the side of the envelope and pulled out a note. I watched her eyes as they darted back and forth across the page. I sensed intelligence there.

  “Where are the rest of the Crypts?” I asked. “Or is the whole gang just you and the girl at the door?”

  The look on her face darkened. “If you’re trying to count how many of us there are, to report back to the Wolves, you won’t be able to—but believe me, there are many more of us than there are in your little pack.”

  I put up my hands apologetically. “Didn’t mean to rub you the wrong way. Just curious.”

  She took a moment to judge me honestly and said, “The Crypts are all here. You’re just not looking in the right places.” She finished reading the note. Her dangling earrings rattled with every movement of her head, and only now did I realize what they were. Human finger bones.

  When she was done with the letter, she turned her eyes from the paper to me again, studying me as intensely as she had studied the letter. “What’s your name?”

  “Everyone just calls me Red.”

  She grinned. “Are you the Red Rider?”

  I have to admit I was impressed. I didn’t know I had a reputation. “Yeah, that’s me. So how come you know me?”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said. Again, a statement more than a question. I found it hard to believe that I could forget someone like this, but I drew a total blank. She smiled even wider. It was almost warm. “I used to be your babysitter. In the days before.”

  All at once it came to me—not a memory of her face, but a memory of her style. The way her hands would move across a game board. The way she would sing to me when I went to sleep. For an instant I flashed on a memory of her perfume—sort of vanilla and spice. She didn’t smell like that now, though. She had the same strange, unnamable smell as the rest of this place.

  “Rowena?”

  “So you do remember me!”

  I nodded. I couldn’t imagine my parents trusting me to the hands of a babysitter like this…. But I guess she wasn’t always like this.

  “You were a sweet kid,” she said.

  I frowned and pushed up my shoulders. “Yeah, well, sweet doesn’t get you much in this town.”

  “It can get you further than you think,” she said.

  “Were you always so mysterious? I don’t remember that.”

  She responded with a silence as mysterious as her words. Pulling a pen out of thin air, it seemed, she flipped over the note and scribbled on the back of it. “Take this back to Cedric,” she said, handing it back to me.

  She took no care to conceal the note in an envelope, or even to fold it so that I couldn’t read it. Somehow I sensed she wanted me to read it, so I did. The message read:

  IT IS AGREED.

  SEND HIM AT MIDNIGHT,

  THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW.

  “You can go now,” she said.

  “Can I ask what the message means?”

  “Better if you don’t.”

  Knowing I’d get no more out of her, I turned to go, and as I neared the door, the first girl appeared out of the shadows, opening it for me.

  “A word to the wise, Red,” Rowena called out from behind me. “If you can’t stay on Cedric’s good side, then stay out of his way entirely.”

  Then the door slammed closed behind me, and I was alone in the stark shadows of the d
ead industrial canyons.

  12

  A Few Million Werewolves

  Being a double agent takes a toll on you. You spend your days lying, pretending to accept friendship like you mean it, knowing you’re going to betray those same people who trust you. Cedric had so much power in his gang, but in a way I had even more power than him. Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

  When a growing half-moon hung above the city, Cedric took us all back to the roof of his apartment building, to give me the big talk. It was a week until the night of first change.

  “You want to know why there are werewolves?” Cedric asked as we sat in rusty chairs on the roof. It wasn’t as dark as it had been that first time, and I found myself less terrified than I had been then. The memory of being held out over fifteen stories of thin air isn’t something that fades too quickly. Somehow I couldn’t help but think this was another test.

  “There are werewolves because one of your ancestors got bit by one,” I told him.

  “That’s not what I mean.” He pushed himself closer, the legs of his chair scraping on the gritty tar paper of the roof. The rest of the Wolves sat in a circle around us, like this was another secret rite of the werewolf order.

  “Everything on Earth is here for a reason,” Cedric said. “Trees are here to make oxygen, worms are here to make dirt. There’s no such thing as a freak of nature. If it’s here, it’s naturally meant to be here.”

  Unnaturally, in your case. I didn’t dare say it out loud.

  “Most other animals got predators to keep their population down—but see, us humans are too smart for predators. Even the stupid humans like Klutz.”

  The others razzed Klutz, and he threw a few well-placed punches to shut them up.

  “We build walls and fences to keep the predators out,” Cedric said. “We put ’em in zoos, and the ones that get loose, we can put ’em down with a single rifle shot. See, we got brains.”

  “So, what’s your point?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Cedric leaned forward. “It used to be that diseases kept the human population in control. Before we knew how to fight them, things like the plague came and wiped out people like flies—but not anymore. We got vaccines, and antibiotics, and Pepto-Bismol and stuff, so suddenly the bugs ain’t so bad anymore.” He looked around to make sure he had everyone’s attention, although I got the feeling they’d all heard this a dozen times before—every time a new Wolf was going to be “made.”

  Cedric spread out his arms. “So here I am, Mother Nature, trying to figure out how to keep humans down, on account of the population is reaching like a gazillion.”

  “Six billion,” I told him.

  “Whatever. Anyway, Mother Nature scratches her head, thinks for a while, and says, ‘Hey, I know—I’ll come up with a predator as smart as a human. One with a thirst for human blood.’ She can’t use evolution, though, because that takes too long, and she don’t got that much patience. She needs to work herself up something real quick…so what do you think she does?”

  I wanted to answer with something obnoxious, like “She goes on eBay,” but the truth was, I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was listen, my mouth dry, my throat closed up, and my eyes fixed on those yellow eyes in front of me.

  “Mother Nature,” Cedric proclaimed proudly, “creates werewolves to solve the problem. Oh, she’d been working on us for a thousand years or so, and with each generation we’ve gotten stronger. Hungrier.”

  Cedric’s logic was as twisted as his supernatural DNA. I found myself amazed by how he stretched everything to fit the way he saw the world. A person could fall into that, believing the things he said.

  “In ten years, how many more gazillions of people will be on this world if something’s not done about it?” he said. “A few million werewolves could take care of the problem just like that,” and he snapped his fingers, like he could magically create a few million werewolves. Then I realized that he could. Bite enough people, who then bite more people, and pretty soon, werewolf’ll be the world’s fastest-growing ethnic group.

  “Of course it will take time,” Cedric said. “But we’re ready to start expanding outward. Next month A/C is heading out to Chicago to start his own pack there. Warhead will be going to Los Angeles. I figure in less than a year we’ll have packs in twenty cities.”

  The air on the rooftop suddenly felt thin, like I was trying to breathe in space. I thought I might pass out, then I realized I’d been hyperventilating, breathing in and out so fast I was getting dizzy. I couldn’t tell if it was excitement, or fear.

  “And we won’t be just your ordinary werewolves. No! See, I’ve got another trick up my sleeve. One that I don’t even think Mother Nature was counting on.”

  “He still won’t even tell us what it is,” grumbled A/C.

  “I know what it is,” Loogie said, but Cedric threw him a silencing gaze.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I said, trying to slow my breathing.

  “You’re one of us now,” said Klutz, looking to Cedric for approval.

  “Right,” Cedric said. “You deserve to know what’s in your future.”

  I looked around and saw that one of the Wolves was hanging back. “How about you, Marvin?” I said. “What city are you going to?”

  “None of your business,” Marvin snapped.

  “You gotta be with us for a year before you can start your own pack in a new city,” Cedric told me. Then he smiled. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t make your reservation now.” He snapped his fingers, and then Warhead stood up, taking a map out of his pocket, unfolding it on an air duct beside us. It was a map of the United States. More than twenty cities were marked off, claimed by each of the Wolves. I could sense a hint of the werewolf coming to the surface in Cedric. Whether it was a hunger for flesh, or a hunger for power, I didn’t know.

  “Pick yourself a city,” he said.

  I looked at him, and at A/C and Klutz. I looked at Warhead and Marvin. I stood, and feeling lighter than air, I went over to the map. Klutz handed me a marker. The permanent kind.

  “Go on,” Cedric said. “Any city that’s not already taken.”

  I looked at the map, holding the marker in my hand. Any city I want. Grandma was right. This was a dangerous game.

  “Denver,” I said. “I want Denver.” And I marked the city with an X, claiming it in my name.

  The next day I told Grandma that Cedric had big plans, but I didn’t tell her what those plans were. I figured she didn’t really need to know, since it really didn’t change anything as far as she was concerned. Her goal…our goal…was to take out every single werewolf, and Cedric’s plan didn’t change that. “He’s smart,” I told Grandma. “A lot smarter than you give him credit for.”

  That was something Grandma did not want to hear. It upset her so bad, she burned the eggs she was cooking. That might not sound like much, but Grandma was the coolest customer I knew. Nothing ever seemed to rattle her. Even when the Wolves had locked us in her basement, she was calm.

  “I was so sure he’d be like his grandfather,” she said. “Xavier Soames was shortsighted and simpleminded. A werewolf with brains is a frightening foe.”

  “Grandma,” I asked, “you never did tell me how you got Xavier.”

  Grandma cleaned out the burned pan.

  “I didn’t get him,” she said. “Your grandfather did.” At first I thought she wasn’t going to tell me any more, but she put the pan down and turned off the faucet. Her glasses were steamed up from the hot water, and when she took them off, I could see her eyes were a little moist, too. She sat down at the kitchen table, and I sat with her. “We had gotten the rest of the gang, but we knew if we didn’t get Xavier, he’d be able to gather a whole new pack, and so we couldn’t wait. Your grandpa knew Xavier was going to be harder, more dangerous, than the rest. He was the strongest, the fastest, the most brutal of al
l of them. Your grandpa didn’t want me to risk it, so on the next full moon, he snuck out alone, without telling me, to track Xavier down. Xavier had been hiding out for a month down by the docks. Your grandfather found him in an old, burned-out warehouse. He hoped to surprise him, catching him before the moon rose, but it didn’t happen that way. By the time he found Xavier, he was already in wolf form, and hungry. Just before Xavier pounced, your grandfather raised his gun and pulled the trigger. His aim was true, and the bullet sank deep in the werewolf’s chest. It stunned him, but only for a moment—and even though your grandfather had filled up on wolfsbane tea, when a werewolf as powerful as Xavier is furious enough, it won’t make a bit of difference.”

  I was at the edge of my seat now. Grandma took a moment to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. This was hard on her, and I thought I knew what was coming next. I had always heard that Grandpa had died of blood poisoning. But was I about to find out he was really killed by a werewolf? Suddenly I didn’t want to hear any more, but I couldn’t stop listening.

  “Your grandfather ran, Red. He had a plan, you see. He raced to his Harley, then took off, with Xavier right on his tail. Xavier must have known he had less than a minute to live before the silver of the bullet took effect, and he was determined to take your grandfather with him. They were just at the edge of the river, and your grandfather blasted full-throttle down Pier Twenty-four, and soared off the end right into the ice-cold winter water. When he surfaced and looked back, he could see Xavier still there on the edge of the pier writhing in pain, his cells exploding from the inside out. From that icy water your grandfather watched Xavier die. It wasn’t until he got home and told me the whole story that he noticed a small cut on his heel. Xavier had nipped at his heel just before he rode into the water. It was barely a scratch, but sometimes all it takes is a little bite.