“Yeah,” Ron said, sensing the urgency. “I know when and I think I know how if we can get to that garage of Kenny’s a few miles outside of town.”
“I think we can,” Kenny said. “It’s not on the books anywhere. I mean, JoAnn, you know about it …”
“You’ve taken me there once,” she said. “Remember, when we were dating? What do you call it? Is it a Batman thing?”
“Superman, darling,” Kenny said. “It’s the Fortress of Solitude.”
“Who gives a fuck?” the Mother Wolf swore. Her heart was still beating very fast and very hard and her desire to get something done was paramount. “If we get there, what do we do?”
Over the next half hour Ron laid out his plan to the group. It was a good one but a dangerous one on several levels. As his explanation went on it was tweaked and details were added and subtracted. Josie hardly noticed it, but she had begun to change back, realizing it only when the cold of the morning hardened her nipples, which were suddenly back where they usually were. She hopped off to find her clothes, hoping no one had noticed. By the time she got back, the plan had been set.
“I hate to be the one to bring this up,” Dave said, “but before we do this we need to do something. I need everyone to think this through, really think about it, and decide if they’re in or out. Some of you have a lot to live for, except Kenny.”
Dave had planned that joke out before he started talking, knowing he’d get as good as he gave.
“Fuck you and your weird-ass wife, man,” Kenny said, true to form.
“My point is if we do this, we all do this,” Dave said. “We do it as a pack or not at all.”
“I guess that means you’re riding point?” Ron asked.
“Yeah, I’m riding point,” Dave said. “I’m gonna insist on that.”
“When was the last time you were on a motorcycle, Dad?” Dilly asked.
Well, Dave thought, at least he was acting as an equal part of the group.
“I got it, I promise,” Dave said, half to Dilly and half to the group.
“How about this,” Josie said. “I need to go talk to JoAnn and Dave needs to talk to Conall. If you’re on board, meet out front in twenty minutes and we’ll head for the Batcave or whatever.”
“Fortress of Solitude. Jesus,” Kenny said.
“If you’re coming, do what you need to do. If you’re not coming, don’t show up. You won’t have to face us. We’ll make it easy for you. Sound good?”
Everyone nodded in agreement and the meeting started breaking up. Josie made a bee-line for JoAnn.
“Come here, darling,” she said, making fun of Kenny’s affectionate term. “I think I figured something out.”
•••
Dave could hear, even before he got to the door, that Conall was on the phone and he was pissed. He waited outside the door to see what snippets of conversation he could hear.
“Come in, you asshole. I smelled you when you turned the corner,” Conall yelled.
So much for that.
The Irishman was laying on the bed, his leg propped on several pillows, the legs of his pants cut open so some future medical care could be administered. Dave hadn’t had a good look at the injury, but based on the coloring alone he knew something gnarly was going on under the skin. Conall caught him looking.
“Your psycho wife did a real number on me,” he said.
“It’ll heal,” Dave said.
“That’s not what I’m talking about, brother,” Conall replied. “I find the clues, I come out to the middle of bumblefucky Nebraska and what do I find? One of the worst pack leaders I’ve ever met and his wife who can do something I’ve only read about on parchment. I mean, do you realize what this means? Do you have a clue?”
“There’s a lot I don’t know,” Dave said. “But I know how special that woman is.”
“I fucking doubt it,” Conall said, shifting his weight and letting out a brief gasp of pain. “Because you’ve got your little slice of the world and that’s all you know. If you knew what I know, you’d be freaking out right now and begging me for my protection.”
“She looks like she can handle herself,” Dave said, nodding at Conall’s leg.
“Well, I’m glad you’re so full of confidence,” Conall said. “Because here’s just a taste of what I know. I know that if Stander and his men get hold of her, she might very well be the key to figuring out what we are and weaponizing it. They could use her, most likely, to end our species or to turn soldiers into wolves or something worse. She is the missing link that we didn’t know was out there, David, and on a global scale, this is a giant deal but let me make it personal for you. If you’re captured, they are going to poke you and prod you and figure out everything they can and you and your friends will all suffer. But Josie? They will keep her alive until they figure it out. They will savage her like nothing you can imagine. If whatever your plan is doesn’t work, you will all suffer but none will suffer as greatly as your wife.”
For a moment, flashes of Josie on the table being cut up rushed into Dave’s head, but he batted them away and attempted to change the subject.
“Who was that on the phone?”
“Did you hear what I just told you?”
“Yes,” Dave said, leaning heavily on the word. “I heard you. And I get it. I get that this is stupid and I get there’s no net and I get that you can’t help us.”
“ … and that your family suffers and dies if you fail …”
“Right,” Dave said.
“ … and that you can leave Willie, get in the car and drive with me to places you’ve never been, where you can meet more of your kind and have your world opened in a way you can’t imagine. You get all that.”
“Do you even want to hear the plan?”
“NO!” Conall said, yelling hard enough to make him wince in pain. “Because I have zero confidence in you and your mate’s ability to pull it off. Your father did something stupid, and that’s unfortunate, but make the right decisions, goddammit and load up the car and come with me!”
It struck Dave, at that moment, that while his brain had weighed the options of going with Conall, his heart had not, and he gave in to his fantasy for a good, long moment. He pictured Dilly meeting a British wolf his own age, pictured Kenny running his mouth at the Tower of London, himself kissing Josie under the Eiffel Tower. And more than just travel, he imagined the freedom that would come from shaking Cherry off, starting clean, feeling the mass of possibility in front of him. He let the fantasy linger so long his heart began to ache and his pulse started to quicken.
Thoughts of Willie muscled their way in, some warm and some vile, then the vision of the old man on a table, being cut open and tortured. The excitement in his stomach turned, hard, and all the arguments came rushing back through his brain and out his mouth.
“Would you condemn your father to torture and death?”
“If it meant keeping my family safe, I believe I would.”
“I don’t believe you’re that cruel.”
“I am.”
In truth, Conall had seen crack teams of wolves fly through the forest with speed and force. He had defeated enemies and beaten all comers in competition. He was an elite fighter in the world of wolves, but that woman had handily beaten him. Conall motioned for Dave to come closer.
“I’ve already failed at my mission, David,” he said. “They already have a wolf. That’s something they’ve never had before, so this situation is already fucked up beyond all reason and I can see your mind’s already made up, so fuck it. And, if you breathe a word of this to anyone I will deny it and deny it until my final breath, but with Josie on your side, you might have a shot.”
The two men spent the next half hour going over “the plan” and Dave left Conall with his foot up and an ever so slight smirk on his face.
•••
Josie looked for her son in the room, by the edge of the forest and even behind cars and trucks in the hotel parking lot. His scent
was strong but either he was moving or she was missing something. Kenny and JoAnn were jabbering in the parking lot with Ron and Carl, and just as Josie was about to get really annoyed, she heard her son’s deeper voice boom in laughter.
He was joking around with everyone.
“ … so he’s up on the bridge, right, and the rope is tied around his chest,” Kenny Kirk was saying. “And we had added about ten feet of rope. He was going to swing down and we added the rope, right, and he took this running swing thinking the rope would catch and he’d go right back up and his stupid ass lands half in the water and the other half hits the bank—BAM! …”
Everyone was laughing and Kenny was rolling on the story. Dilly was between Ron and Carl and hadn’t noticed her yet, so she watched him. He was tall, he was handsome, he was brave, he was loyal and while he still had a lot to learn, he was quite the kid, she decided. And he had saved his father. She couldn’t bear to lose him, but maybe he was ready for something like this.
Just as Kenny was finishing his story, the boy noticed his mother and his smile faded. He gave a look around the circle.
“Well, go, man,” Kenny said. “I’m not saying anything important here.”
Dilly lumbered over, his head down.
“So, am I getting yelled at?” he asked, still a few huge steps away.
“A little,” Josie said. “I’d certainly be in my rights to ask you what you were thinking, attacking a strange wolf who could have very easily killed you. But you held your own.”
“A few more transformations and I think I’ve got him,” Dilly said. “I’m faster than he is, Mom. If I can get the speed working with my attack, then …”
“You’re not as fast as I am,” she interrupted. “And you made your own decision. I’m proud of you for that. But my God, Dilly, he could have killed you.”
“Like those guys in our house? Those guys who are hunting us right now?”
“Yes, like them, and what’s your point?”
“My point is I’m already in danger,” Dilly said. “And if we’re going to go get Grandpa, I’m going to need all the practice I can get.”
He was planning to take part and planning to fight, Josie thought. No other option had occurred to him.
“Listen to me,” Josie started. “I want you to really give thought to not coming with us.”
“I’ve given it thought and I’ve made my own decision,” Dilly said. “Just like you and Dad told me to do, so instead of trying to protect me, start thinking about how you can use me, OK? This isn’t me saying ‘I’m not a kid anymore Mom!’ This is me saying I’m part of this family and part of this pack and I’m going to go rescue my grandpa.”
“Yeah,” Kenny yelled from the circle a few feet away. “I mean, all hell, Josie, I mean yeah. He was talking loud and he’s right and he was talking really loud.”
Kenny shut up as Josie had given him an icy stare, the price for eavesdropping. Dilly had already turned around and was walking back toward the group.
“Dilly, come here,” she shouted.
He reluctantly stopped in his tracks and started to trudge back. She met him halfway.
“Never run as fast as you can,” she said. “If you’re in a fight, you don’t want your opponent to know how fast you can go. Save that until you absolutely need it.”
She threw her arm around his waist and led him back to the circle where Kenny told him about what the claws were good for, Carl talked about the deceptively small spaces a wolf can fit into and Ron gave the young soon to be wolf advice on how best to use your jaws without doing any permanent damage.
•••
It took Conall and Dave forty-five minutes to come out of the hotel room and when they did, Conall was on a makeshift crutch made out of the shower-curtain rod and a shampoo bottle. His non-crutch hand was around Dave, who was walking him toward his car.
“Leg’s busted, huh?” Kenny said, smiling.
“Yeah, golly gee,” Conall said, doing an impression of Kenny’s twang. “Leg’s busted.”
“You blimey twat,” Kenny shot back in a terrible brogue, smiling the whole time.
Conall steadied himself up against a wall and made a motion for everyone to gather round. Instinctively, they looked at Dave who gave a small nod and they all squeezed in making a suspicious-as-hell semicircle around the Irishman.
“Dave told me what you’re going to do,” he said. “So I want to give you a piece of information and a piece of advice. Then someone take me to my car and get me the hell back to civilization. Agreed?”
Everyone muttered in agreement or nodded their head.
“OK, then. I’ve made a few calls to my people and they are still too far out to help. The nearest group is about four hours away and Willie will be dead by then, I assure you. But my people are also tracking the company that has occupied your town. They are a group called Hartman Corp. and they are sending reinforcements and an extraction unit, most likely to collect the lot of you. My people aim to stop them.”
No one said a word but the air shifted mightily around the circle. This was the first time in the past godforsaken week that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. They could fight and if they could win, outside forces might win as well. Conall sensed the optimism and quickly squashed it.
“Don’t think for a second this means all you have to do is kill Stander and his men,” Conall said. “My people might not be able to stop the Hartman Corp. goons. A few might get through. Or, much more likely, you are all currently about to ride to your deaths.”
“Thanks for the confidence, man,” Kenny said. Conall ignored him.
“So go, fight for your town if you must. But I need you to know and understand down to your very soul that you are never safe there again. Others are going to come looking for you.”
“About that,” Ron said. “I think I might have an idea.” He was met with Dave giving him a short head nod, as if to say “we’ll deal with that in a bit.”
“I can’t tell you what to do anyway, which brings me to my piece of advice,” Conall said. “My job is to go find people like you, but I’ve been places and I’ve done things. I’ve killed and while not pleasant, the impact of it doesn’t hit you until you’ve become human again. You will be bloodthirsty and you will be vicious and I have no doubt that each and every one of you will kill if you must but when it’s over …”
Conall tapped his makeshift crutch as if searching for the right phrase.
“When it’s over remember this: There is more to come. You may feel like there’s a hole, slowly eating you from the inside but there’s more to come. It doesn’t make sense now, but as someone who’s been on the path you’re about to walk, it will make sense.”
He paused, raised his head, and took the time to meet the eyes of everyone in the half circle.
“There’s more to come.”
The wind chose that moment to blow, hard, tousling the hair and stinging the skin of the gathered and carrying with it the smells of the forest. The decay of the leaves mixed with the sunlight and undergrowth to form a sickly sweet aroma tinged with the earth, bark, and animal waste.
“One of you grisly bastards help me to my car, please.”
Dave did the honors and Conall let out a short gasp of pain when starting off.
“Will we ever see you again?” JoAnn asked.
“Chances are you’re riding to your deaths, so no.”
They watched him in silence as Dave opened the door and helped him in and watched him lean over and whisper something. Dave seemed taken aback but before he had time to react Conall had shut the door, started the engine and put his car into gear. The engine chugged and kicked and before Dave could make it back to the group, all that was left of Conall was tail lights obscured by dust.
“What’d he say?” Kenny Kirk asked.
“I … I’m not sure it would make sense if I told you,” Dave said. “I’m not trying to be an asshole but I’m not sure I get it.”
Ken
ny kicked the dirt, like he had done a few days earlier in front of his shop. Was it still there? Was anything still there? The rest were similarly lost, wondering what had become of their town and it was Dilly who broke the silence.
“So,” he said, in a clear, low tone. “What number y’all at?”
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 5
There is no consensus at all among those at the Barter County Historical Society about how the town of Cherry got its name. The several older ladies who make up the group had never considered the question nor given it serious study. Had they bothered, they would have found the following story in the book Of Mountains and Plains: The Diary of a Mountain Man by Rex Leschinsky.
In the book, Leschinksy attempts to interpret the writings of Elliot Goodchild, a “Mountain Man” who lived alone on the Nebraska plains and spent a number of years with the Native American tribes that had resettled there. From his book:
The diary entry on January 18 proves his relationship with the Chocktaw tribe was one of mutual curiosity, if not respect. Goodchild recounts being around the campfire and hearing a remarkable tale of forbidden love told around a crackling fire in the dead of winter. He writes “with a clear head, this story would never have been told. Bitter cold clouds the senses, if not loosens the tongue.”
The story is of a spirit of the woods that guarded and protected the tribe. The spirit was ancient and when it saw a white woman, it fell in love. Having no form, the spirit chose that of a wolf and attempted to get close to the woman, but she ran for help and soon the wolf/spirit was being hunted by white men with guns. The spirit knew the woods and was wise and soon overpowered the men, killing them. The woman was so terrified by this that she found herself lost in the woods.
Any time the wolf/spirit tried to approach the woman she would scream and cry and so it went into the night and the next day. The woman was tired, hungry and exhausted so the wolf/spirit went to a very special part of the woods and harvested some chokecherries for the woman to eat, placing them gently in his mouth and depositing them a few yards away from her.
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