Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

  Thank. God.

  Sinna could just die of embarrassment. First, she’d ogled him like some totally naïve teenager, then she’d made it worse by running away. Like some demented, socially inept teenager. What is wrong with me?

  Okay. Part of the problem might be that Bryce redefined the golden ratio of proportions. People just didn’t look like that anymore. Sinna was used to seeing people pasty from hiding in the dark, emaciated from lack of food, dirty from lack of washing. And then in walked the Wolfen brothers like they’d stepped out of a body builder ad, and everyone else was just so far beneath them, there was no comparison.

  She groaned and coughed to disguise the sound, risking a glance to see if Bryce had noticed. Who was she kidding? She was a naïve, socially inept teenager. In every way, except for age. Gerry’s carefully structured, pedantic extrapolations on human sexuality had been grossly inadequate, if she’d managed to leave out how the sight of one naked dude could scramble a girl’s brains for an indeterminate amount of time.

  Thanks, Gerry. Thanks a lot.

  How was she supposed to look at him now and not see him naked? Where was her mnemonic memory device for that, huh? Oh, sure, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. Subtract clothes, add water, divide between and around the individual muscle groups, multiply by an overabundance of hormones, encompass in parentheses of one extremely intimate setting, and raise to the power of We-could-die-at-any-moment.

  What did that function equal?

  Sinna shoved to her feet so fast she startled Bryce. “I’m going to bed,” she announced.

  He frowned. “Everything okay?”

  “What? Yeah. Absolutely. Why wouldn’t it be?” If she blinked, he’d know something was up, so she kept her eyes open despite the sting of smoke. They were so wide, he probably thought she’d lost her mind, but after several tense seconds of piercing perusal, he looked away to add another log to the flame, and her tension fizzled out.

  “All right,” he said. And that was it.

  Sinna didn’t stick around; she raced to the mule, slammed the door, and scrunched into as tight a ball as she could to pretend she was invisible.

  ~

  When morning came, her stellar sleep tactic backfired. She was so cramped and sore, her emergence from the truck was not unlike a water buffalo calf being born. If the door’s opening hadn’t woken the forest, her graceful thud to the ground certainly did.

  Bryce had kept the fire going, and now three more tiny woodland creatures were roasting on a spit. Had he slept at all last night? He sat in the exact same position she’d left him: with his back to the mule, hunching close to the flames, as if deep in thought. In the plaid shirt, black cargo pants, and army boots, he was half lumberjack, half special ops. He’d taken off the knife harness, but it was neatly laid out next to him within easy reach should he need it.

  “Morning,” he said without looking at her.

  “Hi,” she replied.

  “You’ve got an hour to wash up and eat. Then we train.”

  Again? “Okay.”

  Sinna picked herself up and stretched out her sore muscles, in no mood to dunk into that river of icy death. But clean was clean, and the cold might clear her head. She limped downstream to the watering hole Bryce had used last night. No physical evidence remained of him ever having been there, but somehow Sinna felt like he’d never left. Her face burned as she stripped down and waded into the water.

  It was much colder than she remembered, and her teeth chattered as she submerged to her chin. The sun wasn’t high enough yet to reach this spot and its absence made Sinna feel like she was bathing in the underworld with a hologram of Bryce standing in the same place, performing the exact same tasks, only a split second faster or slower, like two pendulums swinging at slightly different rates. In the moments they coincided exactly, Sinna shivered, searching the woods for spying eyes.

  Paranoid now?

  Yep.

  She washed faster, eager to get out of there. Her hair was a mess, and she had to finger comb the worst of the tangles from the curls. It’d be a whole lot easier to just cut it all off, but she couldn’t bear the thought. Not because she was vain, but because keeping her hair long reminded her of better times, when Gerry used to comb it out at night and braid it into pigtails. Cutting it would sever her last connection to the life she once used to have, and relinquish any remaining hope of ever being that happy and carefree again. She wasn’t ready to do that.

  When her fingers started to go numb, she called it good enough and waded back to shore. Her clothes were mostly…okay. Unlike Bryce, her pants were blood free and only needed a good shake to dislodge the road dust. Her tank top was fine as well. Her overshirt had sustained most of the damage with the blood.

  Sinna worked out her stiff fingers, then went back to the stream to wash the shirt. Dried blood was a bitch to clean. The stains were so set, they didn’t come out completely, but at least most of the smell washed out. She’d hang it by the fire to dry while she ate.

  Speaking of which, a little extra heat would not go amiss right about now.

  Luckily, Bryce had kept the fire burning hot for her. She huddled close to it while she ate a gourmet breakfast of fresh squirrel and itty-bitty fish. It beat the hell out of decades-old cans of chili. With a little salt, it’d be fantastic.

  “How are your arms?” Bryce asked.

  Sinna shrugged. “A bit sore,” she said around a mouthful of fish. “But not too bad.”

  Their tea had been brewed from young pine needles in a rusted old can. Sinna didn’t ask where he’d found it; she just drank. It warmed her insides, and despite the strong resin taste, the vitamin C would do her a world of good. This was a feast! So hearty and delicious, her unease around Bryce magically melted away. Amazing what a simple hot meal could do.

  Her quiet companion had returned to his whittling. Made sense, now that she knew what he was making. They’d broken about half of the arrows he’d made yesterday and she’d worried they wouldn’t have enough when it would count. In these woods, he had a veritable arrow-making factory, and already a decent stack sat next to him, but he was still going. One could never have enough ammunition.

  Practical busywork. Sinna could admire that. And he was so efficient; he could sharpen a tip and carve a nock in under a minute. She counted.

  “Can I ask you something?” she asked, breaking the comfortable silence.

  “Can’t stop you.”

  “Har har.” Smartass. “If your Montana den is so great, why aren’t you and Aiden back there?”

  “We go on periodic provision runs.”

  “But you made it sound like the den is completely self-sufficient. What provisions do you need?”

  “Things we can’t make.”

  “Like…?”

  “Unmakable things.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “My turn,” he said. “What happened to you after Gerry died?”

  Sinna almost choked on a bite of squirrel. She coughed, and took a sip of pine tea to clear her airways. “Where did that come from?”

  He shrugged, set a finished arrow aside, and took up another raw stick. “You’re so good at coaxing others to talk, you never say much yourself.”

  “There’s not much to say, really,” she hedged.

  “Event A: Your caretaker and the only person you’ve ever known and lived with since Chernobyl, dies. Event B: Aiden and I find you shot and bleeding to death in the company of several other people. Discuss.”

  When she didn’t answer right away, Bryce set down his tools and braced his elbows on his knees, giving her his full attention, which made it even more difficult to unravel her tongue.

  Sinna didn’t know where to start. She opened her mouth a couple of times, but couldn’t find the right words to explain.

  “Take your time,” Bryce said gently, almost as if she were a wild animal he didn’t want to spook.

  Sinna poked at the biggest burning log to break it apart. When it kicke
d up a shower of sparks, they brought back a memory. “Gerry used to save her notes on an old voice recorder. It ran on batteries, and for a long time we had plenty of them. She didn’t tell me when she put the last ones in.” God, this was harder than she thought.

  “She died on my birthday,” Sinna said. “We were going to have a huge meal, and she had this bracelet all wrapped up in a fancy box and Christmas ribbons. And then I had to go and leave her. Afterwards I… I sat there for hours, just playing back her voice. I listened to her talk about the Grays, and me—things she never told me directly. She worried about how safe our house was, and where there was still food to be found, and how she wished the world could be better for me. I can recite those recordings by heart now, but I couldn’t tell you what her voice sounded like. All I remember is her screams.”

  Sinna shook her head. If only it was that easy to forget; just shake it off like a dog shook off bothersome fleas. But those fleas kept coming back, just like her memories. “Anyway, that recorder and the bracelet was all I took with me, besides food. The batteries had died, but I figured as long as the chip was okay, I could maybe find more and get it working again. Stupid, I know. I should have taken something worth trading. I didn’t think of that.

  “I found a group of stragglers in an abandoned church. Twenty-six of them at the time, all crammed into this underground rectory. They didn’t have much, but they had enough to get by, and they knew where the pickings were still decent, so we managed. I traded five cans of tuna for a pair of batteries. Then I changed them out and discovered the memory had gotten wiped somehow. I cried so hard that day. It was like I’d lost her all over again, you know?”

  “There were only six of you when we found you.”

  “Yeah, well. Shit happened. People left, hoping to find some promised land out east. Others just disappeared, and the rest died off. One by one. After half of them were gone, we didn’t bother mourning anymore. Fewer people meant fewer mouths to feed. Easier to sleep without all the noise, and our meals were a little bigger; turns out there’s more power in smaller numbers.

  “There was this one girl, eighteen-year-old smartmouth, who liked to huff paint thinner. She spent most of her time in a daze, watching us and smirking every so often, like she was thinking ‘I wonder which one of you will be next.’ She used to try to make us take bets on whether or not the gatherers would come back from their trips. I hated her so much. Then, one day, she just got up and walked out, like she was done with it all.

  “And then there were ten. Harli went first. She was out on a gathering trip and fell ten stories out of a broken window. At least that’s how Connor told it. But since he’s the one who tried to kill me, I find myself questioning everything he’d ever said and done.”

  “That’s right, Connor was the blademan.”

  “Yeah. He used to be a butcher. Real handy with a knife. Like when he stuck it into James’ heart. But that was a mercy. Jimmy had a bad infection that had gotten him more than halfway to the grave. Connor just nudged him over the threshold.”

  “And the rest?”

  Sinna bit down on her lip. “Nate killed Tam.” She had to force the words out. “Jimmy was the love of her life, and when he died, he took her soul with him.” The rest came out in a rush. “We ran out of food, we decided it was time to bug out, but Nate didn’t want to drag her along. So he killed her while the rest of us were sleeping.

  “Isaac died in the chase with Grays. We got separated. The rest of them hid in an elevator shaft but I couldn’t… I… It just reminded me too much of Chernobyl. I ran a different way. When I found them later, they told me Isaac’s heart had given out. And then Connor shot me, and I woke up in a cute little house with two new Wolfen friends. The End.”

  Sinna expected Bryce to ask more questions. She almost wished he would; give her an excuse to snap at him, take some of this anger out on someone. All of those people dead and gone, and she’d just stood by and let it happen. Oh, sure, she’d talked a big game with Nate over Tam, but he’d gotten the last laugh anyway. Sure, she’d helped Isaac get out of harm’s way, but he’d died there all on his own. Even when she helped, she didn’t help.

  She owed them her life; because of them, she was sitting here now, alive and well. It pissed her off, even more so because she had no one to blame but herself. So yeah, a verbal spat would be nice about now, just to get it out of her system.

  But Bryce said nothing, just looked at her, and when she didn’t go on, he nodded and went back to whittling those damned arrows, leaving Sinna to self-destruct in the silence.

  Rather than sit there and do nothing—the surest way to drive her bonkers—Sinna retrieved an arrow from yesterday’s bunch and studied the fletching. It looked simple enough, just a bit of duct tape cut into triangles and curved to steady the arrow’s trajectory. She took the bit of remaining tape, claimed one of the smaller, very sharp knives from Bryce’s collection, and sat on the other side of his arrow stack to fletch her useless little heart out.

  After that, she practiced archery. She had the mechanics down now, so Bryce didn’t need to instruct her. He just pointed out the target, and let her have at it, and for a while, it was relatively easy going. The old ache of strain eased, and Sinna was able to shoot like a pro before a new ache set in. The final score: Sinna seventy, woodland targets three. And the best part was no arrows were lost during the honing of her skills.

  “Can you teach me to hunt?” she asked, gathering all of her arrows back up.

  “Not today.”

  “Are you sure? I’m a pretty quick study.” Her small victory over static targets had made her giddy. She hopped from foot to foot, bow in hand, arrow nocked. “Please?”

  Bryce glared.

  “Just throw something! I want to see if I can hit it.”

  He sighed, picked up a pine cone, and hurled it into the sky. It disappeared before she’d even had a chance to sight it down.

  “I wasn’t ready that time.”

  “Then that’s your first lesson in hunting. You want to eat? Be ready. Always.” He took her bow and stashed it on the mule’s back bench. “Get in. We’ve got ground to cover.”

  “Be ready. Meh, meh, meh,” she mimicked, climbing back into her seat.

  The mule had taken a serious beating. Even after as good a scrubbing as they could manage, it looked like crap. Somehow, though, it still worked, and after an hour of trekking through the woods at a crawl, they found a semi-decent road again and turned south.

  It was a quiet drive, which bothered Sinna for a while, but then they were out in the open and she settled in to watch the scenery pass by. She imagined what the people in the Gilroy colony would be like. Despite Bryce’s fears, Sinna believed there had to be some good left in people.

  Maybe they’d already made that serum thing, and Sinna and Bryce wouldn’t have to take the girl, just the chemical solution. Maybe they weren’t like Klaus at all.

  And maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and the sky will rain down chocolate chip cookies.

  Sinna frowned at the horizon. “Hey, Bryce, do you see what I see?”

  “Yeah,” he said shortly.

  Dark, ominous storm clouds were gathering a few miles off, and the mule was heading right for them.

  “What do we do?”

  Even as she asked it, the sun dimmed, taking its battery-recharging power with it. This was coming together faster than Sinna liked, and there was no shelter nearby that she could see.

  “We keep going as long as we can,” Bryce said, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He was gradually speeding up, as if they had a snowball’s chance in hell of outrunning it.

  “What happens when we can’t go anymore?” Rain and wind were minor inconveniences; she could handle that, no problem. A little water, possibly hypothermia? They just had to wait out the cold and they’d be fine. The rumble of thunder worried her more. Lightning liked fast-moving metal objects.

  Bryce didn’t answer. “Keep an eye out for caves, buildin
gs, fallen trees; anything we can hide under.”

  “Right.” She could do that.

  The first blast of chilled air sent a shiver of unease down her spine, and the first drops of rain almost sent her into a panic. Then it started pouring so hard she couldn’t see anything at all through the deluge. Without windshield wipers, Bryce was driving blind.

  But he never slowed.

  Which was why he hit the lone figure in the road, head-on.

  22: Bryce

  FUCK!

  A body struck the windshield, bounced, and rolled over the roof onto the truck bed. Bryce slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard left, but the mule lost purchase on the wet pavement and hydroplaned.

  Sinna screamed, stiff-arming herself away from the dashboard, eyes squeezed shut. Water poured in through the windows. Bryce couldn’t see shit, and they were spinning so fast, he had no point of reference nor enough leverage to do much about it.

  With every ounce of his considerable strength, he yanked on the steering wheel, turning the tires in the direction of their spin to regain some control. The mule careened off the road, hit a solid patch of dirt, and skidded to a hard sideways stop. The right side tires lifted into the air; the truck teetered, suspended on two wheels, before it tipped back and safely slammed down onto all fours.

  “Fuck!” No other word for it. Just…fuck.

  Sinna pushed wet hair from her face with a shaky hand. She’d left it loose to dry into big, glossy curls around her face and shoulders. Now it was a sopping mess again, clinging to her skin. “What the hell was that?”

  Bryce shoved open his door and climbed out into the rain, slamming it shut again. That last bit of force disintegrated the windshield and showered the dashboard with shards. He growled, and stalked around to the back of the mule.

  Sinna came out on the other side. “Is he alive?”

  Bryce grabbed ahold of the guy, who’d somehow gotten stuck between compartments, and hauled him off the truck to the ground.

  “Easy!” Sinna snapped, falling to her knees next to the squirrely looking little shit who’d almost gotten them all killed. She checked his pulse. “He’s alive.”