Eddie breathed deeply and blew the breath out forcefully.
Reached for the door handle and pulled on the latch.
Shined the flashlight out the side window, straight into the eyes of the closest wolf, blinding him.
Hopefully.
Then he did the same thing to the pair of wolves standing on either side of the first, one at each corner of the car.
Then he pushed open the door and stepped into the night.
3
In her heart Alicia Havens knew sitting here waiting to be rescued was pointless. She wasn’t typically one to dither; she liked to think of herself as intelligent and decisive, and as soon as she had told Eddie to stay inside the car she knew it was a non-starter.
Nobody knew they were here. Hell, her mother didn’t even know Alicia was out on a date. Eventually, their family and friends would realize they were missing and would launch an all-out search, but it would take until tomorrow at the earliest for that to happen. Even when it did, the area surrounding New Quebec, New Hampshire was so vast and so remote the police could search twenty-four/seven and still not find them for weeks.
Meanwhile, they would run out of gas and freeze to death.
Or run out of food and starve to death.
She knew all that in her head.
But in her heart, Alicia wanted Eddie to slow down, to stop acting like a hero in some stupid action movie and start thinking outside the box. Maybe they could come up with an idea that would get them out of this mess if they just took a little time to try. Something that wouldn’t put him at such obvious and dire risk.
At the moment she couldn’t imagine what that idea might be, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
But she knew he felt guilty for getting them into this mess, and as frustrated—and terrified—as she was, she understood he was doing what he thought was best for both of them.
So the moment she heard the clunk of the door handle, Alicia turned away from the side window and looked over at Eddie. He shoved open the car door and slipped through the opening, slamming the door closed behind him before any of the animals outside could wriggle through.
The ring of wolves broke for a moment, the ones closest to Eddie shrinking back a few feet, their heads dropping until they were almost in a crouch, their massive paws scrabbling for purchase on the forest floor. They backed up until they were out of reach, but no farther.
Through the closed door, Alicia could hear a series of low growls as the animals responded to being challenged. The sounds came not just from the left, where Eddie was standing, but from all sides of the car. It was almost as if the wolves were saying, “We’re working together, and we’re going to take you down.”
As she watched, Eddie swung the lug wrench in a wide arc, left to right, sweeping it back and forth. He misjudged one of the arcs and the wrench smashed into the Caprice’s left fender, crumpling the molded metal and causing a loud Bang! that made her jump in her seat.
Eddie didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he realized he could not afford to stop swinging his weapon, not even for a second. The wrench looked heavy and she wondered how long he could continue waving it back and forth.
He dropped into a crouch, and suddenly the only part of him visible to Alicia was the top of his head. He continued to wave the wrench with his left hand while holding the flashlight in his right, and then the beam of light disappeared. He was shining it under the car in an attempt to see if he could dislodge the fallen log that had somehow dragged itself across the trail behind the Caprice.
The wolves couldn’t have dragged it, could they? Was that even possible?
Another Bang.
Eddie had struck his car with the wrench a second time.
The wolves began to creep closer once more, their initial fear of the wrench and the flashlight lessening. Alicia had started to think, against her better judgment, that maybe Eddie would be successful, but now she felt her throat tightening.
She slid across the seat to the driver’s side and began pounding on the window, hoping to distract the animals, or frighten them, or at least startle them. Anything to give Eddie a little more time.
And it worked.
For a moment.
The wolves closest to Eddie, three or four of them, reacted as if being beaten by an invisible switch. They jumped and slinked backward again.
Alicia pressed her face to the driver’s side window and looked down. Eddie was now almost flat on the ground, his right arm under the car as his left continued swinging the iron lug wrench. It was obvious he was tiring. The wrench swept back and forth across the ground, spraying leaves and dirt, keeping the wolves at bay.
Soon it would lose its effectiveness. Even now, the wolves Alicia had startled were beginning to creep forward, their bodies still crouched low to the ground, but their eyes fixed once more on the prize.
Eddie Senna.
Alicia pounded on the window again and saw to her horror that her actions were having absolutely no effect on the animals this time. They had apparently decided the noise posed no threat.
Could wild animals reason that quickly and effectively?
Alicia was no zoological expert but she didn’t think so. The thought occurred to her that this whole scenario was off.
It was wrong.
It was unnatural.
Wild animals simply did not act the way these were acting. Everything felt too coordinated, even for pack hunters. It was almost as if they had been somehow…trained. Guided. Controlled.
The notions flashed through her mind and then disappeared. Because the wolves were again advancing on Eddie. Their muzzles were drawn back now, exposing teeth and signaling merciless intentions.
Alicia screamed. “Hurry up, Eddie! Hurry up! They’re coming, hurry the fuck up!”
The wolves flinched but kept coming. The one closest to Eddie glanced up and locked eyes with Alicia through the window for half a second, its gaze filled with intelligence and cunning and understanding.
Then it returned its attention to the task at hand, and Alicia Havens knew she would relive that split second in her nightmares for the rest of her life.
If she survived.
“I’m trying, but the log is jammed in the drive train. I can’t get the leverage to pull it loose!” The words floated up from under the car, muffled by steel and glass. His exhaustion and near panic came through loud and clear, though, and for a moment, the lug wrench began swinging with renewed intensity.
But only for a moment. Eddie was near the end of his endurance, his strength waning even while being fueled by fear and desperation.
Alicia cracked the window and pressed her face to the glass and screamed again, louder this time, directing her voice toward the line of wolves. “Get out! Get out! Go away and leave us alone!”
Her words had no effect.
The wolves kept coming.
A blur of motion erupted from Alicia’s right and the car shook on its frame as a fur-clad body leapt at the window. For one awful instant, the wolf’s face pressed against hers, fangs snapping, saliva drooling, one eye rolling, the creature separated from Alicia by a quarter inch of automotive safety glass.
She jerked reflexively backward as the wolf’s momentum carried it past the window and down to the ground. The moment it disappeared from view, she resumed her position, still yelling, somehow aware that the end game had begun. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen now.
She continued to scream, no longer as part of a plan to assist Eddie, but simply the result of mindless panic. This couldn’t be happening, yet it was happening. She should be locking lips with Eddie Senna right now. She should be sipping a beer and smoking a joint and making out, not watching in horror as a pack of predators surrounded the car and stalked them with evil intent.
Wolf saliva had splattered the window and a few stray strands of silver/grey fur stuck to the glass, but those things did little to interfere with Alicia’s view of what happened next.
&nb
sp; The wolf closest to Eddie—the leader, she thought—sprang forward and went for Eddie’s foot, his jaws snapping. Alicia knew what she would hear if she weren’t screaming: the snarl/growl of the wolf and the furious clicking as its teeth ground together.
From under the car Eddie screamed. He swung the lug wrench wildly, and its heavy iron tip grazed the wolf’s muzzle, and a thin spray of blood misted outward as the animal sprang away. It leapt nimbly out of danger and snarled.
And then two more wolves struck, one from Eddie’s right and one from his left, their movements again as coordinated as any military maneuver.
The force of Eddie’s strike against the first wolf had caused him to lose his grip on the lug wrench, and he scrabbled for it in desperation but he had no chance. The wolves struck his left leg, powerful jaws latching onto it between ankle and knee.
Blood instantly drenched his pant leg as he screamed, the sound loud. Agonizing. Hopeless.
Both wolves shook their heads as if testing their grips, convincing themselves Eddie could not escape. Then they began dragging, pulling him away from the car and toward the forest. He screamed and fought, pounding his fists into the wolves’ faces to no avail. They didn’t react, didn’t even seem to notice they were being struck.
By now, wolves had begun drifting from Alicia’s side of the car toward the driver’s side, where the action was taking place. They crowded closer to poor Eddie, a mass of undulating furry bodies, and then two more struck, latching onto his right leg exactly as the first pair had done on the left.
The pack was yipping and barking and howling, and Alicia was screaming and Eddie was screaming, and the wolves began to move more quickly, dragging his helpless body farther from the car.
He was halfway to the tree line when the last two members of the pack attacked in a frenzy of snapping jaws and spurting blood and, for a very brief time, Eddie’s hoarse wails. There were no words, just a babble of half-formed cries as flesh was torn and new wolves shoved their compatriots out of the way, anxious to take part in the brutal bloodletting.
By the time Eddie stopped screaming, Alicia could no longer see his body. The scene was one big mass of bloodstained fur. She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t tear her horrified gaze away. She panted and moaned and pressed her face to the window.
One minute Eddie had been here and then he was gone.
He had died a horrible death trying to save her.
And now she was alone.
4
Alicia turned away from the window. She sat back in the driver’s seat, her mind numb, stunned by the ferocity—and the swiftness—of what had just happened. It occurred to her that she must be going into shock, because she had stopped crying and, for the moment at least, her body had stopped shaking. It was entirely contrary to the reaction she would have expected after witnessing such a horrific act of brutality.
But shock was something she could ill afford. If she wanted any chance of avoiding the same fate that had befallen Eddie, it was critical she keep her wits about her.
Think.
Reason things through.
Come up with a plan.
It occurred to her that she was intentionally avoiding looking out the window to her left. The last thing she wanted to see were the four-legged predators ravaging their kill, the wolves jockeying for position to satisfy their bloodlust, tearing the meat from Eddie’s bones.
The wolves jockeying for position.
The wolves were jockeying for position. All the wolves. They were off to the left, clustered around what remained of Eddie. The ones who had stood sentry on the right side of the Caprice before the attack had wandered away from their posts, breaking ranks to participate in the kill and to help themselves to the spoils of success.
For the time being at least, they seemed to have forgotten about Alicia.
Maybe there was a way she could capitalize on that, take advantage of their single-minded attention to their prize.
She felt guilty for what she was thinking. Using Eddie Senna’s corpse as a diversion while she made her escape was heartless and cruel.
Or was it?
He was beyond help now, and wouldn’t he want her to get away? Hadn’t he slipped outside the Caprice for exactly that reason, to free the car and allow them the opportunity to escape? Obviously he hadn’t planned for his attempt to end the way it did, but would he resent her taking advantage of his sacrifice to save her own life?
Of course he wouldn’t. He would expect her to do exactly that. Her successful escape would mean he hadn’t given his life in vain. It would mean his desperate gambit had seen at least some small measure of success.
Or maybe that was all bullshit. Maybe it was just a fantasy she was selling so she might manage to look at herself in the mirror in the unlikely event she lived beyond the next few minutes.
But it was irrelevant, at least at the moment, because she had convinced herself. Eddie would want her to get away if she could.
She forced herself to raise her eyes and look out the driver’s side window. The seething mass of fur continued to work at Eddie’s remains. Bodies lowered, the animals jerked their heads back and forth, tearing meat from bone before lifting bloody muzzles with their prizes and then being pushed out of the way by other hungry wolves. Even the wolf Eddie had struck in the face with the lug wrench had recovered enough to take part. It was still dripping blood but chewing enthusiastically.
Alicia felt sluggish, almost as though she was stuck in the middle of a particularly realistic nightmare. She reminded herself that she needed to act now, to take advantage of the horrifying diversion. Soon the wolves’ enjoyment of their kill would wane and when it did, Alicia thought she knew what would happen: they would remember that a second potential victim still sat just a few feet away.
And she doubted the animals would be too concerned about the fact that their next meal was locked inside a car. She doubted they would have any problem with the notion of waiting her out.
She had to move.
Now.
She slid across the bench seat back to where she had been sitting when she begged Eddie not to leave the car. Pressed her face to the glass and scanned the terrain outside. The headlights were still on, but obviously they pointed to the front of the vehicle and not to the side, so the available light was ghostly and shadowy. But it looked to Alicia like her suspicions were correct: the wolves were all currently on the other side of the car.
Chowing down.
She shuddered and whispered, “I’m sorry, Eddie.” Then she supported the door as best she could with one hand while pulling on the release with the other. Opening it was going to result in a certain amount of noise, there was no escaping that fact. All she could do was try to minimize the sound as much as possible and pray the killers on the other side of the car were still too caught up in their bloodlust to notice.
She froze at the clunk of the door’s release mechanism and waited for the sound of animals rushing around the car. She tensed and prepared to slam the door closed.
Nothing.
No furry four-legged bodies shot around the front of the car. She craned her neck and looked out the driver’s side window. The feeding frenzy continued unabated.
Alicia began easing the door open and nearly screamed as the interior light flashed on.
She clamped her jaw closed and bit down on her tongue, cursing her own stupidity. How could she have forgotten the damn light?
This time she was certain she had screwed up what might be her only chance at escape, but again, the animals on the other side of the Caprice seemed not to notice. They remained utterly focused on their meal, although at the rate they were devouring it, Alicia assumed that situation would soon change.
She breathed deeply and silently and slipped through the car door. She realized she had begun shaking again, almost uncontrollably, her hands and arms and legs stuttering like marionettes under the control of some overenthusiastic puppeteer.
She took one long
step away from the car, willing her feet to move quietly, praying her luck would hold, cringing at the sound of jaws snapping and flesh tearing across the narrow logging road.
After the first tentative step she stopped, rooted to the ground by an almost overwhelming sense of terror. Then she forced another step.
She choked back the moan that threatened to escape of its own accord. If the wolves heard her now, or sensed her presence, she would be finished. She doubted there would be time to dive into the car and pull the door closed before the pack could be on her, and the prospect of those razor-sharp fangs ripping into her soft flesh filled Alicia Havens with a kind of mindless dread she had never before experienced.
And still the wolves didn’t notice.
Her next step was a little quicker. To call what she had decided to try a “plan” would be to unfairly denigrate the word, she thought. Her “plan” was no more than the vague notion that if she could manage to very carefully and quietly move far enough away from the Caprice while the animals were otherwise occupied, maybe she could then break into a sprint and make it to Mountain View Road before the wolves remembered there had been two potential victims inside the car and not just one.
Why she saw Mountain View Road—also known as Route 9—as some kind of safe haven she had no idea. New Quebec was so small, and Mountain View Road so remote, that even on a Friday night the road was likely to be deserted. If she somehow survived long enough to make it that far, it was entirely possible she could stand there for an hour or more before any cars passed by.
And even though the wolves were currently—and thankfully—preoccupied, what in God’s name made her think they wouldn’t simply follow her scent and hunt her down even after she had put some distance between herself and the car? Wolves were among the most efficient and capable predators on earth, and she was…well…just a scared high school junior, a girl who was still having trouble believing her situation was real.
So all in all it wasn’t much of a plan.
In fact, it was a downright shitty plan.
The Lupin Project Page 3