Hitchhikers (24 page)

Tracks run through Wolf Point. Every night I
used to fall asleep with the lonely train whistle filling the
night, the smell of rusting iron, the screech of metal brakes…

These would be the same for any railroad.

(the chances that this is the same track)

it is the same

(can’t be sure)

home it leads home

I follow the wolf’s instincts. We run
alongside the tracks, in the level land beside the rails. Trains
roar past, sending a flurry of icy wind against my matted coat of
fur.

More and more familiar smells assault my
nose, a combination of the exhaust from pickup trucks, cow manure,
the roadside trash, the mushy slop from the school cafeteria, the
fried oil of the local bar and grill, hiding under the thick greasy
stench of fire.

Now I’m tearing through cow pastures,
startling bovines drifting off to sleep in the twilight. I’m racing
down familiar roads, cutting across lawns. I follow the fire, but I
know where it is. Hoping I’m wrong. The whining sirens reach my
ears and the adrenaline pumps in my veins.

Across a road, narrowly avoiding trucks and
their blinding headlights. Up that long dirt road that winds up
into the hills, away from everyone else, strobes of red and blue
pulsating against the sky. The sirens’ wail is deafening; without
my hearing I find myself shrinking back into the trees, slowing
down, approaching cautiously. The scent of humans is all around,
and I can see them, clustered around the smoking wreck that barely
resembles a house.

So many times I’ve imagined my return home.
Trudging up the driveway, my mother framed in the screen door,
sometimes happy, other times angry or sad. But always the house was
there, and my mother always waiting for me.

Instead, my house is empty.

Lurking in the shadows, I watch the ashes of
my house crumble into a pile. The firefighters have given up at
this point. Maybe they never cared to begin with. Maybe by the time
they got up here, it was too late, and all they cared about was
preventing a forest fire. No one is here, crying for the loss of
their home, no neighbors to explain anything. The firemen and cops
stand around, occasionally spraying at embers, talking in small
groups.

Darkness descends, creeping in from the trees
and stealing over the charred remains of the house. I wait for the
fire trucks to lumber off, for the police cars to wander away and
attend to more pressing business, leaving behind ribbons of bright
yellow caution tape to keep the onlookers at bay. And there are
onlookers, backcountry people from further up the mountains, hungry
for a taste of someone else’s misery or a possible usable object
from the ashes. Once the officials leave I watch these people pick
through the remains of my old life. The ashes must still be too
hot, for they stay on the edges and drift off.

After so many days and nights of running, I
am at a loss. This was my goal, my only destination, and now that
it has turned into a dead end, I’m not sure what to do next. The
exhaustion settles over me like an iron blanket, and I lie down in
the frosty leaves and fall asleep, the scent of smoke as my
blanket.

In the morning I blink awake, shaking off
what I first believe is snow on my eyelashes and fur. Then I
realize I am covered in ash. Black smudges mar the snowy ground and
mark my pelt.

Where to go from here? Somewhere a war is
being waged, a war in which I am supposed to be the heroic warrior
who saves his beloved and his faithful sidekick. Too bad I can’t
even find the battle ground.

The black scorch mark on the earth hasn’t
left much of a trail for me to follow. I can’t tell if my mother
was here when the fire began, or if she escaped. Surely there would
have been a trail leading away if she had, but I can’t find one –
the smoke is clogging my nose and making it impossible to scent
anything. I nose around the wreckage hoping to find something, some
relic of my childhood to carry away

(how would I carry it I’m a wolf now)

There’s nothing. A howl of sadness erupts
from deep within me, echoing through the mountains. It trails in my
wake long after I’ve left Wolf Point, headed south.

The heating vent blows directly on my head.
It’s a welcome respite from the cold outside and I can only hope
the waitress turns a blind eye long enough for the crust of snow
and ice to melt from my gloves, and for the shivering to stop. I
only had enough change for a cup of coffee, which I try to drink
fast enough for the waitress to offer me a warm-up.

The diner, some nameless joint with the neon
“R” burnt out on the sign, has the sense of passing through. Not
quite a truck stop. The other customers look road-weary, not like
townies or regulars – there’s no town near enough for townies. The
waitresses are harried, worn down, like they just want to earn
enough money to get out of this place. I’m not even sure where this
place is. Some town in South Dakota. All the town names blur
together.

It’s been a month since I returned home. A
month since I abandoned any hope that I might be a hero to
somebody. For a while I thought I’d live as a wolf, and spent weeks
in some other consciousness, letting the wolf take care of me. It
got to be very lonely. Not that I’m less lonely as a human, but I
thought it might be nice to be around other people and feel warm.
Especially after I had to wander around in the cold night air
scavenging clothes out of a big metal donation bin in a strip mall
parking lot, and raiding a number of drive-through windows for lost
change. It took me almost all night to come up with enough for this
cup of coffee.

You can’t imagine how nice it is to be
surrounded by the sounds people make, the rambling conversations
and the clink of silverware and the frying of food, and the
flickering light of the TV bolted up near the ceiling. No sound but
there are closed captions and I read the transcript of whatever’s
on, even when I try to look away. During the early afternoon there
were soap operas the waitresses stopped to watch, then some
afterschool cartoons. Now it’s the evening news. A steady stream of
babble to keep my mind off of other things.

The smell from the grill back in the kitchen
makes my stomach growl, and I know I won’t be able to sit here much
longer.

“Hey, turn that up,” calls a waitress who’s
sitting in a booth right behind me on her break. Her voice jolts me
out of staring at my coffee.

My waitress, for now behind the counter,
finds the remote control and suddenly sound blares into the diner.
As soon as I hear the topic of the news story I freeze.

“…received more reports of wild dogs
attacking people. Jack and Charlotte Early, an elderly couple from
Frazer, were out walking Monday evening when they spotted a large
pack of wild dogs.” A tremble enters the hand wrapped around my
lukewarm coffee mug – Frazer is the next town over from Wolf Point.
The camera focuses on a woman labeled as Charlotte Early. “They
looked almost like wolves,” she says before the shot returns to a
young woman with straight blond hair sleekly cut above the
shoulders of her black trench coat. She is labeled as Justine
Willis, Field Reporter. “The couple called the police department,
but by the time animal control officers arrived, the dogs had left
the area, leaving behind one victim – an unidentified man in his
early twenties, who was presumably out running.” Cut to a shot of a
hospital. “The man was brought to Trinity Hospital in Wolf Creek in
critical condition. At some point during the night, however, the
man disappeared from the hospital.”

“Spooky,” said one of the waitresses.

The waitress behind me shushes her as Justine
Willis, Field Reporter reappears on the screen.

“This is the fifth victim of a wild dog
attack in the past month…” The fifth? I’m sure they’re not
including the “wild dogs” that followed me and Lila through
Nebraska, either. My mind races to conclusions about what the wild
dogs really are and what they’re doing out by Wolf Point.

“…Brian Boysen of the Montana Animal Care
Association offered some precautions.” A middle-aged man with thick
brown hair squinted at the camera. “First, never approach a wild
animal. These animals might look like dogs, but domesticated dogs
will not be traveling in packs. Usually wild animals will be scared
off by loud noises. If this does not work, and the animals approach
you, back away slowly, avoiding eye contact. By all reports, the
victims have all been runners who most likely attempted to run
away. Running will only trigger the animal to chase you. Above all,
remember there is safety in numbers.” Justine continues over a blue
screen showing a phone number, “Please contact animal control if
you spot these wild dogs.”

The diner buzzes with an interest I can’t
figure out. I’m pretty far away from Wolf Point, at least 50 miles.
What are these people worried about? I, on the other hand, have
reason to worry. The werewolf war is going to come to everyone’s
attention if these enemy packs keep attacking humans. Then I
remember how Zeke got bit, and I begin to think that maybe the
other werewolves are trying to up their numbers by making new
wolves.

I have to go. Like, right now, I need to run
and find Kayla because I’m sure they still have her. Who knows what
they’re doing to her.

I’m getting up to leave when the waitress
behind me says, “My neighbors got attacked, and I called the
police, and it never even made the news. I bet the news people
don’t even know about it.”

“The Baileys, right?”

“No, their last name was Oliver, this younger
couple. No kids. They went out for a walk like they do every night,
and I heard the dogs barking and all, I saw them out my front
window just attack them and that’s when I called the police.”

“Well, I heard some woman with the last name
of Bailey got attacked out your way. Laura Bailey. She lived on
Wells Road, that little dirt road off yours?”

“When was this?”

“Last night.”

“Shit.”

I sit back down. My ears are on overdrive.
More people attacked, more werewolves, a whole army of them. How
many of these people survived the attacks? How many of these
victims know what they are now?

More voices join the conversation. Everyone
seems to know someone who knows someone who got attacked. The
numbers pile up in my head. Someone asks why the police haven’t
done anything, and suddenly I’m wondering if there aren’t
werewolves among the police, if this army of new werewolves aren’t
now linked to the police and the military, and what the hell is a
lone wolf like me supposed to do about it?

“Are you okay?”

The voice cuts in and I snap back to the
reality of the diner and the spilled coffee in front of me. I yank
a fistful of napkins from the dispenser and mop up the mess.

“I’m fine,” I tell the waitress.

I throw the soggy napkins into the trash on
my way out.

I should be able to smell them, even in human
form. It took me forever to find the road they were talking about,
Wells Road, it wasn’t on any map but the guy at the gas station
knew where it was, and here I am, out where some lady got attacked
by wild dogs just last night, and I’m not smelling anything. It
hasn’t snowed since last night, hasn’t snowed for a week, no chance
for the elements to wash away the scent. Looks like it’s finally
warming up into March. The dirt road is long and I’m tired and on
edge and staring at the half-frozen puddles watching for a paw
print or scuffle mark or anything to indicate their presence,
because I can’t smell a damned thing.

I should be able to smell them. I pass two
houses buried deep in the trees and then the dirt road trails off
into nothing, and I yell, kick a tree, then sit in the snow to
nurse my foot. Where are they? How are they hiding?

My head bumps time against the tree trunk.
Why can’t it be easy? Why can’t I find them? Everyone’s gone.
Kayla, Zeke, my mom. Maybe they’re dead. And if they weren’t, what
could I do to save them?

Bump, bump, bump.

The forest is still, no birds chirping. Water
dripping from the trees and soft clumps of snow falling. I think I
can sit here forever, my ass growing numb, I can melt into the
forest and become it. I close my eyes.

(Daniel)

It’s a whisper. I imagine I can smell Kayla,
her lilac-wild scent, her hair falling over her bare shoulder.

(I’m here)

I sit up straight, eyes scanning between the
trees. In a few moments I close my eyes and listen hard. Take deep
breaths, filtering through everything I smell for that one hint of
lilac.

(where are you I can’t find you)

Softly the answer comes, almost too
quiet.

(I’m here)

I stand up and begin taking off my clothes. I
drop them unceremoniously into the snow. The change trembles in me,
or maybe that’s the cold. Before it comes, I kick my stuff behind a
tree. Then I’m a wolf.

It’s like putting on a pair of glasses.
Suddenly every sound and scent is ten times clearer.

Of course, it’s a bit too late.

The black wolf emerges from only twenty feet
away. I stare him, feeling my lips curl back to reveal my fangs,
angry that he was hiding so close, angry that he has some way to
hide from me, angry that Kayla is around and I’m sure it’s this
one, the black wolf, who has taken her and harmed her.

He snarls back at me.

Two more wolves walk out from behind bushes
and trees where I was so certain, only seconds ago, that nothing
and no one could possibly be there. From behind me my senses snap
with the sound of more wolves crunching over the snow, exhaling
meaty breaths into the cold air. Three – no, five – make that seven
wolves behind me. All walking toward me. Tightening the noose.