The Wolf Keepers

by Elise Broach

  “That’s it!” Tyler urged. “Jam your foot into the fence and swing your other leg over.”

  Lizzie tried to do as he said, wedging the toe of her sneaker into the mesh, but just as she was climbing over the bar at the top, her foot slipped and she started to fall. Tyler dove beneath her so that her sneaker landed on his back.

  “Whoa!” Lizzie cried.

  “You’re okay. Stand on me.”

  With one foot teetering back and forth on Tyler’s backbone, she adjusted her grip on the fence and lowered her other leg to a new purchase.

  “Okay, okay,” she told him breathlessly. “Now I’m good.”

  Finally, she dropped to the ground.

  “See? That was great!” Tyler said.

  Lizzie took a shuddering breath and glanced at the shadowy contours of the clinic. The building was quiet now.

  “C’mon.” Tyler lifted his backpack to his shoulder. “Where’s Lobo?”

  “Follow me.” Lizzie walked quietly under the big window, which shone bright and empty, and peered around the edge of the building.

  “There, in the back corner,” she told Tyler. “That’s the treatment room.”

  Its window was also brightly lit.

  “Be really quiet,” Lizzie whispered, “so we can get close enough to see what’s going on.”

  They tiptoed along the back of the concrete building until they neared the window. Lizzie had only been in the treatment room once before. A year ago, a baby impala had broken its leg and she’d been with her father when he carried the little antelope to the vet. The room was large and antiseptic-looking, with a white tile floor and tall metal cabinets along one wall. There were two broad stainless steel examination tables in the center. On one of these rested a large transport cage, with a wolf inside.

  When Lizzie saw Lobo, she gasped. The massive wolf was lying on his side, his limbs jerking. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh! Look at him,” she whispered.

  Tyler stood beside her, frozen.

  “He’s dying.” She could barely speak. Her throat burned. She thought of the long, hot days in June and July when she had sat mere feet away from him, breathing his smell, watching him flick his ears or sniff the air or trot purposefully across the enclosure toward the rest of the pack.

  Fierce, massive Lobo, with his burning silver eyes … he was so strong and sure and smart. It seemed impossible that he’d been reduced to this fragile state.

  Tyler turned to her. “Is that Tamarack?” he asked, pointing.

  Lizzie saw that in a corner of the room was another cage, with a blanket partially covering it. A mound of light fur filled it, lifeless.

  Lizzie covered her mouth with her hand.

  Suddenly, Tyler grabbed her arm and pulled her close to the wall of the building. “Shhhh. Somebody’s coming.”

  Together they peered over the windowsill. Lizzie heard the faint sound of footsteps, and then saw the door in the corner of the room swing open. Karen, her blond ponytail bobbing, strode quickly toward the cages.

  Lizzie stood on her toes to see better. Karen had a capped syringe in her hand. She set it on the edge of the steel examination table where Lobo lay in his cage. Then she pulled on blue surgical gloves, snapping them in place. She seemed to be talking to Lobo, murmuring in a low monotone, but Lizzie couldn’t hear what she was saying. Karen was so much better with animals than with people, Lizzie thought, not for the first time. It was hard to have a conversation with her—she could be so cold and blunt—but with a sick animal, she was unfailingly patient and gentle.

  “What’s she doing?” Tyler whispered.

  Lizzie shook her head. “Giving him medicine, I guess.”

  Karen uncapped the syringe and lifted it in the air, pressing the plunger to ready it for injection. With her free hand, she unlatched the door of the cage.

  Lizzie stiffened. “She’s not supposed to do that. You never open the cages without somebody else to help.”

  “Maybe she thinks he’s too sick to hurt her?” Tyler whispered.

  Lobo jerked and heaved, but he was too weak to get away from her. They watched as Karen, with one swift motion, held his massive head against the cage floor and stabbed the needle into his shoulder. Then she closed the cage door and latched it. Within minutes, Lobo’s legs stopped spasming. He lay still.

  Lizzie’s heart clutched. “What did she do? You don’t think she—” She turned to Tyler in horror.

  He was pressed close to the window, furiously biting his lip.

  “Did she put the other one to sleep?” he asked Lizzie. “Is that what your dad said?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “No, Tamarack died, remember? But she put Athena to sleep.” Her whole body was trembling now, unable to believe what they’d witnessed.

  “Maybe she just gave him something to make his legs stop jerking around like that,” Tyler said doubtfully.

  “But look.” Lizzie could barely speak. “He’s not moving at all. I can’t even see him breathing.”

  Tyler’s eyes were riveted on Lobo. “Why would she do that?”

  Lizzie crowded closer and watched as Karen ripped off the gloves and threw them in the metal trash receptacle along with the syringe. She picked up the phone on the clinic wall. Through the glass they could hear her muted voice.

  “Hi, Ed, it’s Karen. There’s no need for you to come in tonight: They’re both gone.” There was a pause, and then she said more hurriedly, “Yeah, Lobo, too. Still no idea what it is. Mike is over checking on the others. I’ll call you later.”

  What had she done? Lizzie couldn’t stand it. She wanted to break through the glass and stop whatever was happening.

  But in her heart she knew it was too late. She stared at Lobo’s huge, inert body inside the cage.

  No! she screamed inside her head. She pressed against the window, fully exposed now. No.

  “Lobo,” Tyler whispered.

  Karen started to leave the room. Suddenly, she whipped around.

  Tyler grabbed Lizzie’s arm and they both dropped to the ground on all fours. Lizzie was sure Karen had seen them, but when she peered over the windowsill again, Karen strode back to the trash can and opened it, pulling the drawstring on the garbage bag and taking it with her. She left the room, propping the door open on her way out.

  In their cages, the two wolves lay silent and still.

  Lizzie and Tyler stared at each other, and Lizzie could feel the tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Lobo was dead.

  Chapter 18

  STOWAWAYS

  TYLER SHOOK HER shoulder, his face fierce. “She killed him.”

  Lizzie could only stare in disbelief at the lifeless bodies of the wolves. Tears burned her eyes.

  “Why do you think she did that? Why not just let him die?” he persisted.

  When she didn’t answer, Tyler nodded, more to himself than to Lizzie. “It’s okay. Maybe she was trying to put him out of his pain. That’s what vets do, right?”

  That was, of course, what vets did. Her father believed it was the one thing vets could do that human doctors didn’t do often enough … stop a creature from suffering when the end was near and there was no hope of recovery.

  But everything about this seemed wrong.

  “Lizzie?”

  Lizzie turned to him.

  “It’s pretty late now,” he said quietly. “You should probably go back home, you know?”

  She nodded, full of despair. “What about you? Where will you go?”

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll stay around here tonight and then find someplace new tomorrow.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “Sure,” Tyler said. “I’ll come back to the zoo to visit.”

  “Really? I have some money,” she said hurriedly. “My dad makes me carry it for emergencies.” She fished in her pocket. “Here, take this.” She handed him a ten-dollar bill.

  Tyler hesitated. “For real? You don’t need it?”

  She shoo
k her head. “This is my emergency.”

  He smiled a little. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “And you have my bus pass, right? So you can come back?”

  He nodded. Lizzie squared her shoulders, trying to be strong. She cast one long glance back at the still bodies of the wolves, then led the way around the building to the front yard. She wouldn’t think about Lobo now. She couldn’t bear to.

  “Do we have to climb the fence again?” Tyler asked.

  Lizzie shook her head. “We can go out through the access gate. From the inside, you just have to press a button. But it makes a lot of noise. I guess we should wait till Karen leaves.”

  Tyler shifted from one foot to the other. “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know, but—” Lizzie was about to say, “there’s nothing left for her to do,” but then they heard the loud metallic rumble of the garage door going up and bright light spread across the darkening yard.

  “Hide!” Lizzie barely had time to whisper. She and Tyler crouched at the corner of the building, just as Karen hurried out of the garage and hopped into the truck.

  Was she leaving?

  The engine roared to life, but instead of driving out of the clinic yard, Karen reversed the truck into the open garage.

  “What’s she doing?” Tyler whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie answered in confusion.

  They leaned around the corner of the building to peer into the bright box of the garage. Karen had shut off the engine and now she was lowering the truck’s tailgate so that the empty bed of the truck butted against the clinic’s loading dock. Then she ran up the steps into the building.

  Lizzie turned to Tyler. “She’s going to load something into the truck. This way she can roll it straight from floor level onto the tailgate.”

  They waited. They could hear Karen clanging around inside, exclaiming softly as she struggled with something. Then she appeared at the loading dock with a trolley and balanced across it was the cage with Tamarack’s white body inside.

  “The wolves!” Tyler hissed. “She’s taking their bodies somewhere.”

  They watched as Karen maneuvered the cage onto the open tailgate and then shoved it toward the back of the truck bed, the metal scraping loudly. Barely pausing, she grabbed the handle of the trolley and strode quickly down the hall. As soon as she was gone, Tyler crept around the corner of the building, into the garage.

  “Tyler! What are you doing?” Lizzie whispered. “She’ll see you.”

  “No, she won’t,” he called softly. “I’ll stay out of sight. I just want to see what’s going on.”

  Nervously, Lizzie followed him. They could hear Karen in the back of the building, grunting and moving something.

  Together, they leaned over the side of the truck bed. It was empty except for the cage with Tamarack, shoved against the cab, and an old wool blanket wadded up against the side.

  They heard wheels rattling down the hallway, and Tyler immediately bolted for the open garage door. Lizzie followed him, ducking out of the line of sight.

  “Where would she be taking them?” Tyler whispered.

  Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe to Fresno, for the autopsy? But she was supposed to call my dad. He wanted to go with her.”

  “She seems like she’s in a hurry,” Tyler said.

  “Look,” Lizzie whispered. “She’s got Lobo now.” She couldn’t suppress a gasp at the sight of his big body heaped on the floor of the cage. He looked smaller to her somehow. Poor Lobo. She swallowed a sob.

  They watched as Karen struggled with the second cage, bumping it from the trolley onto the tailgate and again shoving it toward the cab of the truck, while the wolf’s body bounced lifelessly against the frame.

  Tyler frowned. “Remember how I told you I saw a truck with a cage leaving the clinic the other night? It was like this.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Lizzie said, her eyes riveted on Karen.

  In a series of quick motions, Karen shut off the lights inside the clinic, pulled down the rolling door of the loading dock, and slammed the truck’s tailgate closed.

  “She’s ready to go,” Tyler said urgently. “Come on.”

  Lizzie stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you want to see where she’s taking them?”

  “Yes, but we can’t—”

  Just then, the engine roared and the truck emerged from the garage, rolling across the yard toward the access gate. The garage door jolted down behind it.

  Before Lizzie could even understand what was happening, Tyler hoisted his backpack on his shoulder and sped through the dusk to the truck bed, crossing the yard in a few swift bounds. Karen’s pale arm reached through the truck window to punch the button that opened the access gate. As the gate creaked loudly, Lizzie watched Tyler heave himself into the dark truck bed from the passenger side. He leaned toward her, beckoning.

  Lizzie didn’t know what to do. In a minute, the truck, the wolves, and Tyler would be gone.

  As the access gate shuddered and ground to a halt, she ran. She reached the passenger side of the truck bed just as the truck started to move. She thought for a minute that she was too late, as the tires crunched loudly over the gravel. But then Tyler strained toward her, and she grabbed his outstretched hand. With her other hand, she gripped the cold metal side of the truck and half tumbled, half slid into the truck bed.

  Breathless, she pressed her body flat against its ridged surface in case Karen glanced in the rearview mirror. She huddled there with Tyler and the dead wolves as the truck rumbled out of the zoo and into the night.

  Chapter 19

  NIGHT RIDE

  THE EVENING AIR was cool and sharp, blasting over them as the truck sped up. There had been a few abrupt turns leaving the zoo, but Lizzie could tell that now they were on a highway. She and Tyler lay crammed together in the metal bed, with his backpack wedged between them. Tyler had snatched the wool blanket and spread it over them, whether for warmth or to hide them from Karen’s view, Lizzie wasn’t sure. The wool scratched against Lizzie’s skin and she smelled the warm, musky scent of animals. When she twisted her head, she could see the front of the cages and inside them, the blurry humps of the wolves’ bodies. It was dark now.

  Lobo! For a minute, his wild, beautiful face loomed before her, the mane of fur, the steady, secret gaze of his silver eyes. Again, she stifled a sob. Even if Karen had done it to save him from pain, there was something so deliberate about taking his life. Her father would call it mercy, the kindness of sparing an animal needless suffering. But at what point did mercy become murder? How could anyone know, really know for certain, that the only future outcome was death?

  She felt Tyler turn toward her and she hoped he couldn’t see her tears. “You okay?” he asked, close to her cheek.

  Lizzie nodded. “What are we going to do when the truck stops? She’ll see us.”

  “We have to jump out before she opens the back.”

  “But how will we have time?”

  “That’s what we have to do,” Tyler insisted. “At least it’s dark, and she’s not expecting us to be here.”

  They rode in silence, staring at the vast sky overhead as it turned inky, with glittering pinpricks of stars. Lizzie could feel every dip and bump in the highway flying past underneath them.

  “I can’t believe I don’t have my cell phone,” she said. She pictured the cell phone where she’d left it, on the nightstand in her bedroom.

  “Why didn’t you bring it? We could sure use it.”

  “I didn’t know I was leaving the zoo,” Lizzie countered. “I wasn’t planning on a camping trip!”

  Even in the dark, she could see Tyler grimace. “I wasn’t either! But sometimes stuff happens and you have to change your plans.”

  Lizzie was thinking that he had changed her plans by jumping into the truck. But it seemed pointless to argue.

  “I’m going to try to see where we’re going,” Lizzie
said against Tyler’s ear. The roar of the wind and the rattling of the truck made it hard to hear each other.

  “No!” he warned. “If you lift your head and she looks in the mirror, she might see you.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Lizzie said. “She could be driving for hours. What if she’s going to Mexico?”

  The thought had just occurred to her, and as nonsensical as it seemed, she felt a prickle of fear. What would they do if they ended up lost in another country?

  “What are you talking about?” Tyler demanded. “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. But nothing she’s doing makes sense. I’m going to take a look.”

  “You be quick, then,” Tyler said.

  Carefully, Lizzie rolled onto her stomach. Through the wire bars of the cages and the back window of the truck, she could barely make out the silhouette of Karen’s head. She pressed her palms against the ridged metal bed and pushed up just a few inches. A sudden blaze of oncoming headlights lit the truck, and Tyler yanked her down.

  “Watch out!” he whispered.

  “Okay, okay.” Lizzie waited a minute, then gently raised herself again. The wind stung her face. She could see the highway stretching ahead, straight and empty, with black, looming woods on either side. There were no houses or gas stations or other markers of civilization.

  “I think we’re going toward the mountains,” she told Tyler, holding herself up on her elbows.

  “Get down,” Tyler cautioned, but Lizzie craned into the darkness. After a few minutes, she glimpsed something in the distance on the edge of the road: a green-and-white highway sign. As the truck hurtled past, it loomed suddenly: MIDPINES 4.

  Lizzie gasped.

  “What?” Tyler demanded, and she dropped back to her stomach so she could tell him.

  “We’re on the highway to Yosemite.”

  “Yosemite!” Tyler stared at her. “How do you know?”

  “Because we’re almost to Midpines. This is the way you get into the park.”

  “Wow,” Tyler breathed, and then, almost to himself, “I’m going to Yosemite.”

  Lizzie flinched. With all that had happened, how could he be thinking about visiting Yosemite, as if it were a stop on a bus tour? “In the dark, you won’t be able to see much,” she snapped.