Hitchhikers (20 page)

There’s nothing at this end of the barn, no
shovel to use as a crutch, no wheelbarrow to use as a walker. Just
me, and a burning desire to take a shit like a human being instead
of a dog.

I stagger out, my leg finally starting to
feel the strain of walking after being torn apart and sewn together
and torn apart again. I’m practically hopping along on my good leg,
which only makes the gash in my side start to burn.

Crawling. I’m crawling in the darkness
now.

Who knew an outhouse could smell so good. I
don’t care that it reeks and I have to breathe through my mouth.
Finally there’s something to hang onto, a seat to sit on.

Glorious relief.

I’m zipping my pants back up when I feel it.
I can’t say as I smell it – the odor of the outhouse is too strong
to allow that – and there isn’t a noise. But I feel the presence
just as sure as the hair on the back of my neck stands at
attention.

For long moments I hesitate to open the
outhouse door. I wait, listening, until I’m absolutely certain that
there is no pack of wolves waiting to attack me when I do open the
door.

The return journey across the yard is made
longer and more painful as I am unwilling to crawl along like I did
before. I take each step carefully, stopping to listen and smell
the air. Now that I’m out of the enclosed space I can smell more
things, the wood smoke from the Whittemore’s stove, the pines, the
heavy manure in the barn, the chicken coop on the other side.

I don’t smell those other wolves, nor hear
them, but I know they are nearby, perhaps watching me stagger
along, although I think if they were that close I’d have more than
just a shiver of a feeling.

Why wouldn’t they attack now, while I’m weak?
It makes sense to me.

And then I think of Kayla.

If they were able to track me here, in the
middle of nowhere, after my scent would have been erased by a
snowstorm, hidden by the odors of two humans, three cows, five
goats, ten pigs, a bunch of chickens, and all the subsequent piles
of manure, what chance does Kayla have? I left her alone.

Alone and unprotected.

All the way back to the barn. Staggering step
by painful step. Senses on high alert, sensitive to every small
sound, every new scent that wafts in, every slight breeze that
rustles the trees. I get back to my stall. Get inside. Slide the
lock into place. Sink into the straw.

Wonder if she is okay.

I dream of Kayla, lying beside me. Her skin
is cold and it’s dark but I imagine she isn’t wearing any clothes.
The night frost has left its mark on the hay, ice coating each
straw. I pull her tight to me, not that I am much warmer. She isn’t
shivering.

One hand under her chin, I lift her face to
see her eyes.

Two black holes stare back at me.

I jerk away, and awake.

The frost tonight is not so bad as in my
dream – no arctic ice covering everything with white – but I’ve
nestled myself under the hay for warmth. Even through the stink of
the dirty stall, I can smell them. They are everywhere around
me.

I’m on my feet faster than you’d imagine,
considering my injuries. Those don’t matter now. I need to get out
of here. I can feel the wolf pulsing under my skin

(not yet not yet)

As quietly as possible I open the door. The
scrape of metal rubbing against itself sounds colossally loud to my
ears. The rumble of the door sliding open is even louder.

At the barn door I poke my face out, close my
eyes, and inhale.

I can smell their stink, that predatory musk.
It’s close. I breathe in again, and again, until I get a clearer
picture: they were here. They were sniffing for me, around the
house and the barn. They are outside of the cleared area which is
the Whittemore farm, but they are still nearby. The trail, the
trapping trail. The one I used to run through back when I was
welcome in the Whittemores’ house, free to come and go, free from
pain.

This must be how they found me.

I slip out of the barn, keeping to the
shadows – the moon is bright tonight. I can smell where they’ve
been. I catch at least four or five different scents, one female,
the rest male. My ears don’t pick up any noise, and I don’t have
that uncomfortable feeling I did when I went to the bathroom. They
aren’t watching me. Nearby, but not watching me. I wonder if they
are still inspecting the area.

When I reach the house I creep around to the
bedrooms and peek inside. Mr. Whittemore and Zeke are asleep in
their beds, none the wiser. Good.

In the narrow space between the house and the
barn, I remove my clothes and change.

The pull on the stitches as my ribcage
expands make me feel like I’m going to split open. I guess my leg
didn’t hurt as much before because wolf legs are narrower than a
human’s. I spend my first moments as a wolf trying to breathe,
since breathing pulls on the stitches even more. The wound had
begun to heal over the past few days, but the scar tissue isn’t
strong enough to stretch so much yet.

When I can focus through the pain, I get down
to business. I have to find these wolves and kill them all before
they can rally the rest of their pack against me. Why wouldn’t I be
able to kill all of them, when I so easily took care of those
wolves who attacked me and Kayla? I’m a little weaker, more
vulnerable, and I don’t have Kayla to watch my back, but I know
what I did when I was thirteen. What I’ve been doing for the past
three years. Killing. I’m a killing machine.

I put one paw outside of the alley, and they
come.

They swarm through the trees and into the
clearing, yipping and barking, one jet black wolf howling as if the
bugle to call more soldiers to battle. This one is not the leader.
No, there is no alpha here, but I sense that the black one is in
charge. More than five wolves line up facing me.

Nine. Nine wolves.

I draw my paw back into the shadows.

I wonder, for a long moment, if they plan on
talking to me somehow. I wonder if we can settle this without
fighting, and if I’d be able to hear the black wolf’s thoughts,
like the way I hear Kayla’s sometimes.

Then two of the wolves come for me, the
brindle and the gray.

I jump backwards into the alley. I wait for
the wolf to jump up and grab the steering wheel

(….)

Nothing. And in the split second before
they’re on top of me, I realize that I’m alone in the driver’s
seat, and I can’t count on my inner monster to do the dirty work
this time.

The gray

(the female)

lunges at me, snapping her teeth at my neck.
I jerk backwards and reflexively lash out with my paws, as if I’m
human, a boxer. I’m momentarily confused that I don’t have
fists.

(teeth use your teeth)

Before I can recover the gray is back with
her fangs, and the brindle behind her in the alley leaps over her.
He sinks his teeth into my back.

(rabbits pretend they are rabbits)

But the rabbits never fought back, I only
chased them. I don’t remember those times I fought as a wolf. How
did I do it?

When I reach around to bite the wolf who’s
biting my back, the gray grabs me by the neck.

Their teeth are sharp, as sharp as mine.
Their jaws are as strong. And they’ve probably had years to learn
how to fight.

As my breath is choked out of me, I realize
that I may have overestimated myself.

It is as a curtain of darkness is falling
across my eyes that I hear the tinkling, far-off sound of glass
shattering.

Zeke Mr. Whittemore danger

The wolf rears up inside me, matching his
skin to mine, and we twist away. The two wolves with their teeth in
me fly off, taking chunks of me with them. I dodge their bodies and
race into the fray of wolves in the clearing. Snake through those
that attack me.

One catches my rear paw in his teeth, too
close to my injury for comfort. I snap around and sink my teeth
into his throat, shake until I feel blood spray in my face and
flood down my throat, then drop the limp body to the ground.

Three of the wolves jump me at once – I am a
fury of fangs and fur

rip shred kill

cutting them down, tossing them aside.
Running toward the picture window, broken into the living room. I
smell fire and fear and panic.

All I want is to get into the house.

I claw my way through the remaining wolves,
chase another as he leaps into the building. My paws crunch on
broken glass; the darkness of the interior without the moonlight is
disorienting.

There are shouts, human shouts, both Zeke and
Mr. Whittemore. I lunge down the hallway. I never went into this
section of the house when I was allowed to stay here. Zeke’s
bedroom is closest, on the right, a narrow room. I nearly run past
it then skid to a stop and face what is inside.

“Dad!” Zeke calls out, his voice querulous.
The white t-shirt he’s wearing over his pajama pants has blood on
it. I growl, not at Zeke, but at the man behind him holding a shard
of glass to Zeke’s throat.

“That’s right, you’d best stay back,” the man
says. He has black hair and eyes to match his wolf’s pelt, and
thick, overdeveloped muscles in his shoulders and biceps.

I glare at him, emanating hatred from my
eyes, my lips in a snarl that shows him my fangs. If I move quickly
enough, perhaps the black wolf won’t have time to slit Zeke’s
throat before I remove the manhood dangling between his naked
legs.

The man grins, a toothy smile stretching
across his face, revealing a scar that cuts deep into one cheek.
“All I want is to talk. A nice conversation. That’s all.”

Part of me, the wolf part, still wants to rip
him to shreds. The other part is relieved. It’s just like I hoped.
We can come to a compromise.

I close my eyes and prepare to change.

In the midst of my focus

fur melting away

Zeke screams, and a scuffle breaks out down
the hall. For a moment my change is halted, concerned that the
other wolf might have gotten Mr. Whittemore. Then I hear distinctly
human feet moving across the floor, Mr. Whittemore’s familiar tread
muted by socks, and I relax into the change. Then

click BOOM

I have no time to wonder at these new sounds
as I’m already flying through the air and hitting the wall. It
feels like a truck going 80 miles an hour hit my shoulder.

“Zeke?” Mr. Whittemore calls. With a sideways
view and still reeling from the gunshot to my shoulder, I watch him
cautiously make his way down the hallway with the skill of an FBI
agent.

He steps over the writhing body of the wolf
I’d been chasing, pausing only to put a bullet in the creature’s
head. “Zeke?”

I don’t like the fact that Zeke is not
answering.

I stop moving, however, aware that Mr.
Whittemore doesn’t recognize me in this form and is likely to shoot
me too. It’s hard to stay still when you feel like your shoulder is
on fire and there’s a knife in between your ribs, stabbing your
lungs. I do my best, closing my eyes and focusing on what I can
hear going on in that other room.

The black wolf is whispering in Zeke’s ear,
so low and soft that Mr. Whittemore obviously can’t hear him. I can
barely hear him over the throbbing of my heartbeat in my ears. “Not
a peep, human, not a peep.” The black wolf is moving away from
Zeke, releasing him, but keeping the shard of glass pointed at the
boy.

As I zone in on the black wolf’s movements,
his thoughts come to me

Kill the man then the boy and finish off the
Other

He’ll wait for Mr. Whittemore to enter the
room, which Mr. Whittemore will do, cautiously, wondering why Zeke
is just standing there ready to piss himself. Or perhaps Mr.
Whittemore is smarter than I thought.

“Zeke?” He’s at the doorway, still standing
in the hallway, his gun at the ready and now pointed at his own
son. “Is there someone in here with you? Another wolf?”

I don’t hear a reply other than a sound that
might have been Zeke vigorously shaking his head no.

“Then come on out.”

Mr. Whittemore waits, suspicion beading on
his forehead because Zeke isn’t moving. Zeke’s eyes are flickering
toward the man in his room, who is hiding somewhere Mr. Whittemore
can’t see. Zeke’s eyes must be open wide; they make a very soft
squishing noise as they roll around in his head. He gasps, and I
know from the reek of wolf that the man has changed. It’s a sudden
scent of musk and heavy fur

…
and lilacs?

That’s when I immediately know that these
wolves, and that black wolf in particular, have done something to
Kayla. The bitter scent of a sudden rush of adrenaline fills my
nostrils too much for me to tell if there are any other clues, the
scent of blood for example, and it doesn’t matter if they’ve hurt
Kayla or not. It doesn’t matter if my arm is falling off or my lung
punctured.

My four legs shake as I heave myself up. I
will get there. I will kill that black wolf.

I push myself down the hallway, chanting to
myself

Kayla Kayla Kayla

My progress is so slow that Mr. Whittemore
doesn’t even notice me coming.

And then Zeke screams.

I’m running on legs that shouldn’t hold up.
Pain is a distant memory.

I slam past Mr. Whittemore, knocking him
over. Leap into the room, and spend precious seconds trying to find
the black wolf.

I catch a glimpse of a black tail going out
through the window.

Smell blood.

I shouldn’t be able to leap through that
window, over Zeke’s rumpled bed, avoiding the broken glass.

But I do.