Her fingertips skimmed across soft, wet flesh, tracing a gouge that ran from above her ear to just over her temple. The stink of burned hair drifted to her nose. She lowered her hand to her lips and tasted blood. Something...happened. It was so close, whatever that ‘something’ was, and yet she couldn’t grasp it. One thing at a time.
She opened her eyes to a solid blackness. Bolts of pure fear shot through her at the thought that she had gone blind. Thunder rumbled overhead but the realization that it was only storm clouds that blocked the moon did little to calm her. What can I do if I can’t see? A mindless panic sank its teeth into her at the idea of stumbling around in the dark rainy night, hurt and bleeding, vulnerable to whatever might pass by...
The world opened up around her. The blackness faded to a soft grey, the colors of the trees and grass pale shades of their true selves. The small shack stood out against the woods like a beacon. Lifting her eyes to the sky Nowen could even see individual clouds as they carried the storm to her.
My wolf! The panic and fear she had felt before were nothing to the complete and utter terror that gripped her at the thought that her wolf might be gone. She turned her mind inward in a frantic search. There! Her wolf was still there, looking at her from pain-filled eyes, and a sense of relieved gratitude washed over Nowen.
Light rain started to fall. Nowen looked at the shack. From the outside it resembled little more than a partially-upright pile of wood but she knew how? that she could find shelter inside. The distance to the shack seemed as wide as a river. Nowen gritted her teeth against the pain in her head and slowly rose to her feet. The sky and ground tried to swap places and the dark forest seemed to sway in a wind that wasn’t there. She closed her eyes, gulping great breaths of cool air until the dizziness passed.
The clouds split open and rain poured in a deluge. The ground beneath Nowen’s feet grew slick and treacherous. Each step she took was a struggle. Warm blood trickled from the wound on her head, mixing with the rain and mud on her face and coating her lips with a coppery earthen taste. Nowen kept her eyes locked on the shack, and as she made her slow and painful way over the wet grass reality itself faded in and out.
She was staggering through a nighttime forest, leaving a cage of pain behind, following a young girl who would lead her to safety. She was trudging through deep snow, naked, holding a hand to her hurt side as a small house promised shelter just ahead. She was walking through a weedy rail yard, walking towards a woman who was a few years older than her, a woman who had the same black hair and reddish-brown skin that she did, a woman who held her arms open and said her name like an answered prayer.
The shack was suddenly in front of her. Her shins hit the lopsided steps and Nowen fell forward. Her head glanced off the open door and in a starburst of pain the world went grey and distant. Consciousness returned slowly, and when it did she found herself sprawled across the porch. Rain tapped on her legs.
Standing up again was beyond her. On her hands and knees Nowen crawled into the small building and over to the fireplace where she collapsed to the rough wood floor. Nowen lay still, listening to the rain and fighting to calm her breathing. The ache in her head throbbed with every heart beat and without warning a bone-deep weariness washed over her. Sleep. Just a little nap, and things will make sense. I’m just so tired. A solitary lightning flash illuminated the shack. She was facing the corner where Sage had spent most of the last week, watching her from behind a wolf’s dark eyes. The corner was empty now.
Where’s Sage? Her eyelids were sliding down as sleep crept over her. Outside. Right, outside. Everett said she was sitting outside. He’s not here either. Must have joined her. A sweet darkness was pooling through her mind, and there was a faint and far away concern that this sleep would be endless. It was a small concern and surprisingly easy to push away. They need to be careful. They need to be careful, and keep an eye out. They need to keep an eye out for.
“Zoe!” The name echoed through the cabin, louder than the thunder outside. Nowen opened her eyes and shot upright, the fiery pain in her head ignored as the events in the clearing rushed back into her mind. Sage and Everett on their knees, and the man hitting Sage. Her pack mates led away. Zoe behind her, talking, talking - and then the gunshot and the world exploding.
On the heels of this came the memory of Nowen Harper in the rail yard. It was true, she knew, everything that happened that evening. But that’s all there was. The memory of meeting the woman her sister and the betrayal that followed. Then the vukodlak monster coming toward her. The bite, and the breaking of Harper’s mind. Nothing more until Nowen woke in the hospital. The memory was distant to her, as if she stood outside a locked door, looking through a clouded window. It was her as she had been, something long gone, and Nowen had never been one to waste any time on the past. With no reluctance she turned away from the door behind which all that had been of Harper lay.
Nowen rose to her feet with ease this time, her fury a bright shining blade sweeping away the pain and fear she had felt just a short while ago. Her pack was in danger. She would not hold back in her search to find them. Vuk, Zoe, Humanity’s Saviors - she would bring them all down.
And heaven help anyone who got in her way.
Chapter Fourteen
Nowen eyed the sun and gauged she still had several hours of daylight left. She wiped sweat from her forehead and took a long pull of warm water from a canteen looped over her shoulder. The canteen, like the t-shirt, shorts, and sandals she wore, had been scavenged from a weather-beaten car. She had rummaged through a suitcase in the back seat while a desiccated Rev writhed and snarled from the front seat, trapped by its seat belt.
Nowen had walked in plain sight along the highway since leaving the small shack in the woods. She wanted to be seen, wanted to be found by other people or the Saviors. She made a target of herself - and yet she had seen no one in the days since she started back to the Fort, the only place she could think of to try and track down the Saviors. She walked in the day as a human but at night she hunted and slept as the wolf.
Now she ran a hand over her head, her fingers automatically searching through her short hair for the bullet track. It was healing, but slowly, and not even changing to the wolf made any difference. For the first few days she didn’t make much progress on her journey, tiring easily and sleeping for hours. Evidently there were some limits on what vukodlak could bounce back from. She frowned and glanced up at the burning sun; the last two days had been very warm, but as she had no idea what month it was she also had no idea whether or not this was normal weather. I should have looked for some sunglasses. Next car I find, I will.
The empty road seemed to make a mockery of her thoughts. The pavement unrolled behind and in front of her like an eternal ribbon. In her journey she had seen deer and pronghorn, fox and skunks, hawks and magpies and flocks of crows massive enough to block out the sun. Herds of cattle, grown shaggy and wild in their freedom, mingled with horses on the greening prairie. One night she had tracked and killed a wild pig, cooking it over a roaring flame, indulging in the sweet taste of pork. And there in the darkness, with only the stars and her fire, she had laughed. Because any other time she would have loved this, the absence of humans and the destruction they brought. Except now she needed humans and couldn’t find one.
With a sense of déjà vu the smell of cooking meat caught Nowen’s attention and she raised her gaze from the road. The Fort had to be near. She left the highway and jogged across the grassland, following the scent and looking for some familiar landmark. There! She sped up, heading for the small copse of trees into which she and her pack had escaped several weeks ago.
Nowen reached the edge of the copse and sank into a crouch. She studied the Fort. Hmm. More armed guards. Her eyes skimmed over the people in the slice of the Fort she could see, searching for the familiar big shape of Dempsey. He was standing near one of the fire pits and looked to be talking to a small group of men. And they’re all armed, too. She smiled. I wonder wh
y.
Nowen watched the big man until he and his followers walked away and out of sight. Moving back into the cover of the pines and maples she sat on the springy grass and pondered her next move. She didn’t know where the Saviors were but there was a better-than-even chance that Dempsey would know. The problem is, how to get to him? The only thing she could think of was to watch and wait for an opportunity to present itself.
Other than the increased presence of the armed guards, the Fort looked about the same as the last time she had been here. But the longer Nowen watched the more changes she saw. The main fence had been strengthened with more barbed wire and logs and the bare bones of another encircling fence was rising from the earth. More permanent housing had been erected in the form of metal sheds and wooden shacks. The animal pens had been moved closer to the other buildings and the furthest fields, the ones she had seen being carefully prepared for planting, had been abandoned. Closing ranks against the demons.
Her gaze was drawn to back to the fence section closest to her, where Dempsey and his men were walking along the inside of the fence, pulling a small cart loaded with tools with them. Her interest spiked when she realized who was with Dempsey: Robertson. The Savior stopped and pointed at something along the log-and-wire structure. Two of the other men pulled shovels from the cart and began to dig where Robertson had pointed, and when they were through someone stepped forward and poured a greyish powder into the hole. Water was added next, and then Dempsey glanced at Robertson. The plain man gave a small nod. Dempsey started walking again and the others followed. Robertson moved up to walk next to the big man.
Interesting. Dempsey’s still in charge, but in name only? And Robertson had them filling in gaps in the fence with concrete. Nowen smiled again at that thought. The Revs she’d seen hadn’t possessed the thought capacity to go actively searching for holes and gaps, so the Fort was on edge over something else - probably her fiery disappearance. Good. Robertson needs to be afraid. She leaned back against a tree and half-shut her eyes. When darkness fell she would make her move.
The flat report of a gunshot brought Nowen out of her light sleep. She rolled forward into a crouch and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom under the trees. The sound hadn’t come from anywhere near her so she knew she hadn’t been noticed. When the world around her bloomed into muted shades of its true colors Nowen headed for the Fort.
Her rough plan had been to climb over or through the fence while everyone was eating and dancing as usual. As Nowen emerged from the tree line a bright flash of light swept toward her. She dove for the ground, holding her breath as the searchlight passed without stopping. A cautious peek above the high grass showed at least two other lights sweeping across the prairie around the Fort. The rumble of generators could be heard, and Nowen shook her head at the folly. Why don’t they just open the gates to the Revs?
As if in response the unnerving moans of the undead rose into the night. Nowen flinched and dropped her head at the sound of more gunshots. For a few moments there was a perfect fusillade of rounds and then they trailed off. Her head wound began to throb. She absently rubbed the gouge as she thought. There was a lot of wasted resources in what had just happened. During her two weeks at the Fort the large lights were rarely turned on, and the only shots fired were at prey. The Saviors must have brought the supplies with them, which meant they had enough to throw away on a show of force.
It can’t be for me. The Saviors think I’m dead. Or, at least, Zoe does. So, who’s it for? Nowen brushed the thought away; it didn’t matter right now. In the silence that followed the gunfire she heard something else; or rather, didn’t hear something else. There was no music, no laughter, no children running and screaming in play. She could smell food, so it was dinner time, but where was all the usual noise?
Nowen slid through the high grass of the prairie, keeping some distance between herself and the fence. The searchlights burned through the darkness at regular intervals. She reached a spot where she could see the fire pits, and the Fort citizens that sat on the ground or in chairs and ate their meal in an uncomfortable silence. A glint of light on metal; Nowen picked out the shape of an armed person just beyond the reach of the firelight.
She drifted carefully toward the fence, thankful there was no moon out tonight. The rustling of approaching footsteps gave her enough time to drop flat to the ground, where she held herself perfectly still until the guard was gone. Carefully Nowen began to work her way along the logs, hoping the place she and her pack had used to escape was still open. If not, she would look for some other place to enter the Fort unseen.
Voices rising in anger caught her attention. One of the people arguing sounded familiar. Nowen moved toward them, listening as words evolved out of the noise. With her wolf’s vision she saw two men walking toward her position. Wait. One’s walking, and the other is being pulled along. The one doing the pulling had a menacing-looking gun strapped around his waist. The one being pulled had no gun. His skin was dark, and as he yelled at the guard Nowen recognized him.
“Damn it, dude, let go of me!” Benjamin’s voice didn’t quite match the vehemence of his words. Nowen watched as he tried to free his arm from the other man’s grip.
“I will, once you calm down.” The guard sounded almost bored.
“I’ll calm down once you let go of me!”
Without warning the guard yanked Benjamin forward and sent him crashing into the fence. Nowen heard his hiss of pain as he slammed into the barbed wire. The armed man moved in front of Benjamin, clasping his hands together and eyeing him with a disinterested look. “Now look, kid. I was told to have a little talk with you, so shut your big mouth and listen.”
“Talk about what?”
“Mr. Robertson doesn’t like what you’ve been doing lately.”
“Oh? What have I been doing?” Benjamin’s belligerent words seemed to have no effect on the guard.
“The Saviors are here to help. You want safety and security, right? Well, they don’t come without order, and you running around and mouthing off doesn’t bring order.”
The young man took a step away from the fence. “I don’t know if the Fort needs your kind of safety and security! People have disappeared since you assholes moved in. Where’s Raphael? Where’s Mr. Gorschen, and Ruth, and Henry and Jed and Maude?”
“None of that is your concern. The only thing you need to do is keep your mouth shut.”
Benjamin took another step forward. “The hell I will! You think I haven’t noticed that it’s all old folks and sick ones that are missing? What the hell are you people doing?”
One second the guard was standing still, and the next he was on Benjamin, plowing a fist into the young man’s midsection. As Benjamin grunted and hunched forward the guard grabbed him by the hair and pulled him upright. With a violent motion he slammed Benjamin’s head against the fence. Nowen could hear the guard’s low, angry words. “This is gonna be your only warning, you little shit. Personally, I would have stuck a knife through your eye days ago. But for some reason Dempsey likes you, and Mr. Robertson doesn’t want him upset. However,” and the guard drew Benjamin forward, “if you keep trying to start some something, well...accidents do happen.”
“Go ahead and try something, you bastard!” Benjamin’s words came out on a raspy breath.
The guard sighed. “Well, you say that, but once you’re strung up by your arms and the dead heads are gathering around, eager for some dark meat, you might think differently. And I’ll cut off your eyelids so you won’t miss a thing.”
Benjamin swung at the guard. The other man swayed back out of range and then brought his fist crashing into the teenager’s face. Nowen heard the crack of bone over Benjamin’s cry of pain. As the guard loosened his grip and the young man slumped to the ground she rose and walked forward. She winced as the guard kicked at the prone body lying before him. As he drew his leg back for another blow she called out.
“Hey!” The startled man swung about wildly at th
e sound of her voice, drawing his gun with one hand and fumbling a flashlight free with the other. Got to distract him. What do men like - sexy women, right? “You seem like an adequate male. Want to have sex?” she said. The flashlight shone into her eyes.
“What? What the fuck are you talking about? Who are you? Identify yourself!” The voice beyond the glaring light was suspicious and hard.
Damn. What else should I do? A wild idea flashed through Nowen’s mind. She moved closer to the fence. “I...really like you. Don’t you like me?” She pulled her t-shirt off. The flashlight bobbled as she pointed at her breasts. “Do you like these? I can come closer so you can see better.”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, maybe you should come a little closer.” The guard said, and Nowen heard him gulp. At the edge of her vision she saw Benjamin rising slowly to his feet. She moved up till she was almost touching the fence. The guard was right on the opposite side of her, and while she couldn’t see his face she could still feel his eyes moving over her.
What now? “I don’t know if you can see that well through the fence. Why don’t you come out here with me? The grass is soft, and we can have sex.” Nowen watched the flashlight dip wildly up and down. “Come on, I’m ready to do this.”
“Uh, I’m not supposed to leave my post.” the guard said. Nowen put her hands on her hips and pushed her chest forward. “But, but, but you could come in! Go around to the gates, and I’ll meet you there!”
Suddenly the guard’s face was pressed up against the barbed wire. Metal points drew blood as he struggled to get free. Nowen saw Benjamin move closer to the guard, pushing him harder into the fence, but she heard his harsh breathing and doubted he could hold the other man there much longer.
She raised her hand, watching the guard’s eyes widen as the sharp claws grew out of her fingertips. Sliding her hand through a space between two logs she sank her claws into the man’s neck and slashed downward. Blood poured out in a dark sheet and his body sagged in Benjamin’s grasp.
Wolf Hunting (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book Book 3) Page 13