Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

  The only difference was in her eyes; her retinas reflected moonlight, and she could see with perfect clarity even though the bathroom was almost pitch-black. Would her other senses be affected too? Sinna held her breath and listened hard. There were no sounds outside. Just like in the city, the land was dead out here, too.

  She stepped into the bathtub and raised on tiptoes to look out the window. The house they occupied had a big front yard, dry and overgrown with weeds. It was one of a handful on this street, all looking equally homey, and all the creepier for it. Across the street lay a rusted pink bicycle someone had run over. At the house to the left of it, a porch swing creaked in the wind. The next house on the other side had a white sheet tied to the chimney.

  Sinna knew what that meant. Someone had been too afraid to leave. They’d holed themselves up and left a sign so if anyone had come by, they’d know survivors were inside. Judging by the gaping holes where windows and doors had been broken out, it hadn’t worked out for them.

  With a sigh, Sinna stepped back out of the tub. Bryce’s promised washing water sat in a one-gallon plastic milk jug next to the toilet. It was brownish and murky, but it would do the trick. She found a washcloth in the pile of clothes and scrubbed the worst of the blood and dirt off of her torso and arms.

  Soap was a luxury that simply didn’t exist anymore. People had learned to make do without. There were natural ways to get clean and stay that way, of course, but you needed nature to do it. Not something that came easy in a big city like San Francisco. Gerry had made Sinna read all sorts of survivalist books and do-it-yourself manuals, all of it good for about five minutes of that self-sufficient feeling of empowerment.

  It was one thing to know you could make soap by boiling old bones. Quite another to consider it, once you realized the only available bones might have belonged to a friend or a relative. And something all together different to attempt it when any sharp meat smell attracted monsters.

  Sinna hummed with pleasure when the wet washcloth met her skin. Her first bath in who the hell remembered how long. God, it felt good. She scrubbed until her arms grew tired, then pulled on a clean T-shirt. It was slightly big on her and smelled like moth balls, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. With her top sufficiently clean and covered, Sinna kicked off her boots, stripped out of her pants, and washed her lower half with the same determination. By the time she was finished and fully dressed—socks, boots, and all—less than a third of the water remained. Nowhere near enough to wash her hair. She wouldn’t have anyway, even if there had been. One didn’t waste a precious resource like water. And besides, Bryce and Aiden might want to get clean, too.

  Speaking of which, they were awfully quiet in there. Sinna listened by the door. Had they changed their minds and left her behind while she’d been busy washing? Of all the things Aiden had told her about Wolfen, one thing had rung true: Sinna was a pack animal. She needed others around, craved company and contact, and for all that they might be psychotic rapists or murderers, the thought of them not being there made her anxious.

  But that didn’t mean she trusted them. Oh, no. She didn’t trust those two as far as she could throw them.

  It was fear.

  Sinna was afraid she’d open her eyes in the morning and they’d be gone. Or worse, she’d be back in San Francisco, in that horrible church rectory with Tam’s body rotting five feet away. What terrified her most wasn’t that it might all be true, but that it might not be. For the first time since she could remember, Sinna was outside with no monsters around. She could walk out and feel the ground beneath her feet, see the sky above.

  And it was because of them—Aiden and Bryce. Whatever else they might be, they’d given her something she’d never had before: freedom. And it felt too big, too important, to let go. Sinna couldn’t go back into hiding now; she’d never survive it.

  Yes, it was possible this could all turn out very badly for her, and if she went along with it, she might end up regretting the decision for the rest of her life.

  But what if…?

  Ever so slowly, Sinna turned the knob, disengaging the lock with a quiet snick. She stilled for a long time, listening for movement before she opened the door fully. Peeking left and right to make sure the hallway was clear, she stepped out onto moldy carpet. It cushioned her footfalls, and the wooden floor hardly groaned at all when she shifted her weight on it.

  To her right was the room where the brothers waited for her to get back.

  To her left was a descending staircase.

  Sinna went left, sneaking down to the main floor. Everything sat still and quiet; tidy, like a perfect time capsule. There were magazines on the living room couch, keys hanging on hooks in the entryway, and a pile of mail in a basket next to the front door. She could imagine the man of the house coming home after work, tossing his coat onto the hook, and greeting the children who ran to welcome him. At least two girls. The little beds in the room upstairs were both pink, covered in golden star and crown stickers.

  Sinna crept through the living room into the kitchen. The dishes in the sink had long ago been thoroughly cleaned by insects. An empty fruit basket sat on the table, a high chair in the corner, a small TV screen by the stove. The sliding glass door led out into the backyard. She approached it with caution, conscious of every rustle, every moving shadow. The night was still, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Just in case, she pulled a big knife from the wooden stand on the counter and slowly opened the door.

  Nothing immediately jumped out at her.

  Sinna let out a tense breath. She tripped over the threshold as she stepped outside, but caught herself before she fell, looking behind to see if the brothers had heard. Heart racing and head swimming with weary anxiety, Sinna closed the sliding glass door and walked farther into the night. The air was warm and muggy, heavy with an impending storm, so unlike the crisp, windy nights in the city. She rolled her shoulders with an uncomfortable wince; her skin felt sticky with humidity.

  The house had a pool—probably where Bryce had found the washing water—and inside she could see a dark patch of mud where the last of the moisture was still evaporating. The property fence was nothing more than posts stuck in the ground at five-foot intervals, and while the inside of the house was immaculate, its outside looked like the aftermath of a violent invasion: debris, destruction, fallen tree houses and swing sets. A graveyard of broken dreams.

  Driven by curiosity, Sinna walked across the property to the next one. This was a trail—a clear path had been ripped into the suburb with the force of a tidal wave. If she went far enough, would she see where it all began? Somewhere in the part of her brain still alert enough to think clearly, she knew the Grays—converts—might have come this way because they had a lair ahead, and she was walking right into it. But the thought was fleeting, brushed away by a stray breeze that pleasantly cooled the back of her neck.

  Three houses down, Sinna stopped and lifted her face to the sky, sighing at the feel of open air on her skin. Billions of pinpricks of light twinkled above her; an endless sea of possibilities, so far out of reach. At least a handful of those heavenly bodies were satellites and other detritus left over from Man’s sky-faring days. Held in orbit by gravity, they floated out there completely useless, now that no one had the technology to utilize them anymore. A space station was up there too, and for a moment, she imagined what the astronauts must have felt when they’d heard the news about converts. How long they must have watched this planet after the signal had died, waiting for someone to reestablish contact.

  She pictured the moment they realized no one would ever hear them again, that they were completely cut off, abandoned in space in a metal tomb with finite resources. Their bodies would decay more slowly than on Earth, where all sorts of creatures aided decomposition, but at some point, there would have been nothing left of them either, except white bones floating around the cabin.

  How glorious their final sunrise would have looked…

  A stronger
breeze tickled her nose with a scent.

  Sinna whirled around, knife up, but Bryce caught her wrist with ease and pushed it down to her side, holding a finger to his lips for silence. His eyes glinted and darted to something behind her. She slowly turned, and her heart slammed into overdrive. A convert lurked in the next yard over, shuffling around a tree as though lost. It gurgled and snarled, suddenly lashing out and scratching long gouges down its face. It had no nose, the skin and flesh around it rotting outward. With obvious frustration, it threw its head back and screamed, then grabbed ahold of the tree and rammed its forehead into it, again and again.

  Sinna swayed, clutching the knife tighter, straining to bring it up. Bryce wouldn’t let her. Her back abruptly met Bryce’s chest, and his arm came around her. He pried the knife away and leaned in to whisper at her ear, “Be still.” His words were so low, the convert couldn’t possibly have heard, but it lifted its head at the same time and it sniffed furiously, trying to scent something.

  Sinna started shaking.

  The convert’s face contorted, and it gurgled a sound.

  Sinna curled her fingers into Bryce’s arm. She needed to run—now. She never should have come outside to begin with. What the hell was wrong with her? Hadn’t she learned her lesson yet? Get me out of here! she thought, desperate for Bryce to hear and understand. As much as she pressed back into him, silently urging him to move, all he did was squeeze tighter. Please move. Please!

  He didn’t. “Calm down, Wolfen girl. You’re safe.”

  Sinna gritted her teeth, and made herself stand still. This was a test, and she needed to see it through, to make sure what happened in the city hadn’t been a fluke. She needed to know if Aiden had told her the truth.

  “C-can it hear us?” she whispered.

  Bryce turned his head from side to side against her so she would feel his answer.

  “Then why won’t you move?” The absence of her knife made her palm itch; she felt too exposed, vulnerable.

  “Need you to see.” He pressed the knife’s handle back into her palm, but curled his fingers around her grip and kept her arm immobile at her side. Tapping the flat of the blade against her thigh, he turned her attention a few degrees to the left.

  More converts approached, slamming into trees and walls, and careening into each other. One looked more put together than the rest—a female, larger, and not as pathetically emaciated. The others were walking skeletons tenting gray skin; she could have been a supermodel among her kind—tall, lithe, and most importantly, steady. She had markings on her face like some crude attempt at camouflage, and she clutched a thigh bone the same way Sinna clung to her knife.

  When a male stumbled into her, she screamed and clubbed him with the bone so hard he went spinning sideways, and fell. The others converged on him in a feeding frenzy.

  The female did not.

  With a snarl, she turned away and lifted her face to scent the breeze. Her head swiveled toward the noseless one, and she cawed at him. To Sinna’s shock, the male made a sound in return and headed directly toward her. He passed not three feet in front of Sinna and Bryce, so intent on the female, he never heard, saw, or scented them.

  When he reached her, the female nuzzled him, nudged him back in the direction they’d come. She was already following him when she suddenly stopped and scented the air again.

  This time, she pivoted and looked right at Sinna and Bryce. A freakish snarl contorted her face as she bared her considerable fangs, and she screeched so loudly, her body shook and Sinna’s ears hurt. Glass windows cracked, making Sinna flinch, but she held still. Bryce didn’t give her any choice. When the screeching stopped, the feeding converts flanked the female, flexing their claws and tilting their heads toward Sinna and Bryce.

  But they didn’t attack; they waited. And the female stood shielding the damaged male, staring Sinna and Bryce down.

  That was when Bryce moved. He took a slow, cautious step back, making Sinna stumble to keep up. Another step, and another… Almost to the next yard… And all the while, the female watched them. When they crossed the property line, Bryce quickly spun Sinna around and rushed her away. They cleared the distance in seconds, and it would have been less if Bryce hadn’t kept looking behind them. Sinna didn’t dare; she didn’t want to see if they were being followed.

  Aiden met them in the kitchen, and closed and locked the glass door behind them, scanning the yard for movement. He had his gun in hand, but wasn’t rushing out there to use it. “Someone want to explain what the fuck that noise was?”

  “Converts,” Sinna said, breathing hard.

  “Yeah, thanks, I got that. B, what’s going on?”

  He looked at Sinna, then shook his head at Aiden.

  The blond brother looked ready to throttle him. “Get your shit together, we’re leaving.”

  9: Sinna

  Sinna had never seen anyone move so fast. She blinked, and Bryce was gone, running up the stairs, while Aiden grabbed her arm and dragged her across the living room and out the front door. He herded her into the weird-looking vehicle and slammed the door in her face. From inside, she watched as the brothers readied for battle.

  Aiden popped open a compartment in the back. She couldn’t see inside but got a fair idea of its contents when Aiden started pulling out weapons—lots and lots of weapons. He donned a full-body harness that crisscrossed his back and wrapped around his arms and legs, straps covered with small sheaths for knives. It held a series of gun holsters together at his sides, and had a large loop to hold a shotgun at his back. Aiden loaded everything but the back loop with the cold efficiency of someone used to fighting for his life. Rambo had nothing on this guy.

  Then Bryce came out with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He was such a contrast to Aiden, Sinna found it hard to believe they were related. Aiden was light, silver, and attitude; he shone in the night with all of his polished chains, like some sort of avenging angel ready to bring the wrath of God. Bryce was his antithesis; he was the thing that lurked in shadows, unseen, until it jumped out and tore your face off.

  Bryce exchanged the duffel for another full-body harness and a glare from Aiden. He armed himself to the teeth. But to Sinna’s surprise, instead of a shotgun holster, his back straps had scabbards attached. The real kind for actual swords. Bryce pulled the blades out of another compartment and sheathed one from the top and one from the bottom on the other side.

  “You know how I feel about bringing knives to a gunfight,” Aiden told him.

  “Yeah,” Bryce replied in that scratchy voice of his. “And what happens when you run out of bullets, genius?”

  “I liked you better when you didn’t talk.”

  Sinna scowled at that.

  Aiden tossed the duffel onto the back seat, closed and latched all of the compartments, then got behind the wheel. The truck dipped when he sat, and jerked when Bryce jumped onto the back.

  “Isn’t he coming in, too?” she said.

  “No,” Aiden replied. “He’s the lookout, I’m the driver.”

  “But he’s completely exposed out there!”

  “Gotta be, little bit. Someone needs to be my eyes. But don’t worry, he’ll see them long before they see him. Now for you…” He looked her over, tilting his head left and right in deliberation. Then he detached a handgun from his harness and gave it to her. “That should keep you.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “In case you forgot, the last time didn’t work out so well for me.”

  “We don’t have time for you to be difficult right now, okay? It’s just a precaution, nothing more. You have me, and you have Bryce. But in case something happens to us, or if we get separated, you need a way to defend yourself.”

  “You said yourself bullets don’t kill them!”

  “They might not kill, but they sure are good at making a bloody mess. Converts are carnivores, little bit. Giving them a source of meat other than yourself could mean the difference between walking away, and being an e
ntrée. Now stop arguing and take it.” He tossed the weapon into her lap and focused on getting the truck back onto the road.

  The ride wasn’t smooth.

  It wasn’t Aiden’s fault; he navigated expertly, swerving around debris and potholes, but with the roads so damaged, it felt like riding inside an animal with an uneven gait. The whole truck jerked and jumped, tossing her like a sack of potatoes, and by the time they’d left the neighborhood and found a wider street, the half can of beans was climbing back up her throat. She stubbornly clenched her teeth and swallowed back the nausea, refusing to waste a single morsel of what she’d ingested. It wasn’t easy. Each hard turn Aiden took lurched Sinna in her seat, and she had to force herself to breathe through her nose.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, breaking into a cold sweat. The window didn’t open. If she tried the door, she might fall out.

  “Away from here.”

  “And how much longer ‘til we get there?” Another jolt, another spasm, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep everything down.

  Aiden laughed. “I like your sense of humor, kid.”

  So not the answer she’d been hoping for.

  Aiden frowned. “What’s up, buttercup? Something wrong?”

  “Can you”—breath—“slow down a bit?”

  “That’s only gonna make the rocking worse.”

  “Then speed up.”

  “No can do. The mule can handle a lot of damage, but she’s got a temper, if you know what I mean.”

  The mule? How fitting.

  “Beat her up too bad, and she might just decide she’s had enough.” He caressed the dashboard. “We wanna keep this baby running for a long time. Don’t we, sweetheart? Yes, we do…”