“I’M BLIND!” exclaimed the girl in a voice that was just a bit too loud. “THIS IS MY DOG!”
A grin spread across Dirk’s face as the girl’s “service dog” guided her up the aisle. Dirk couldn’t see the creature inside the pet carrier, but he was sure it was more likely to quack than meow.
“I’M BLIND!” repeated the girl as she walked up the aisle.
The commotion among the passengers faded to sympathy. An older man stood up. “Can I help you find your seat, young lady?” he said.
“I’M FINE!” she said. “I’M BLIND!”
The “dog”—John—led her to the seats immediately across from Dirk. She set the pet carrier on the seat nearest the window and sat beside it. John curled up on the floor beneath her feet.
Dirk chuckled as he realized the girl had left two empty seats across from her. He scooted across the aisle.
“Mind if I join you?” he said, not waiting for her answer before sitting down.
John recognized Dirk right away. He growled.
“My, my,” said Dirk to Wacka. “Your dog seems a bit jumpy.”
Wacka thought frantically. This man was familiar. Was he the same man who tried to get Kate in trouble last summer? John didn’t seem to like him....
“HE’S FINE,” she said. “I’M BLIND.”
“Yes, you mentioned that. And may I say hello to your cat?” Dirk peered into the carrier and found exactly what he was expecting. “Oh, goodness me. That’s not a cat at all.”
“THIS IS MY DUCK!” shouted the girl.
“I can see that,” said Dirk. He leaned forward to whisper into the cage. “Hi there, Kate. It’s nice to see you again.”
Kate looked up into the smirking face of Dirk Bragg—the reporter she and John had come to know as Dirt Bag.
Plan B was going off the rails.
“So,” said Dirk, his voice dripping with honey, “if we’re going to be seatmates for this trip, let’s get to know each other, shall we? My name’s Dirk. What’s yours?”
“WACKA,” exclaimed Wacka.
John pawed at her leg. “WENDY!” she corrected. “MY NAME IS WENDY. I’M BLIND.”
“Well, then,” said Dirk. “Nice to meet you, Wacka-Wendy. Now, what are you doing on this train with my friends Kate and John?”
Wacka shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Kate and John had assured her she wouldn’t have to speak very much. They’d promised that people would leave her alone. This man was asking a lot of questions.
“I AM ON A TRIP,” she said, repeating the lines Kate had drilled into her. “THIS IS MY DOG. THIS IS MY DUCK.”
“Right,” said Dirk. “But where are you going?”
Wacka scowled and tilted her head. “I AM ON A TRIP.”
“Yes, but where are you going on your trip?” insisted Dirk. “What is your destination?”
Wacka wracked her brain for useful information. This man was asking too many questions. She did not want to talk to him anymore.
“I’M TIRED NOW!” announced Wacka, remembering another of her prepared lines. “I’M TIRED, AND I’M BLIND!” She leaned against the pet carrier and began to make what she believed were convincing human sleeping noises.
“SNOOOXXX,” she snored. “SNOOOXXXX!”
Dirk sighed and leaned forward to address Kate. “Your friend is a bit peculiar, Kate,” he said, “but that’s fine. I’m sure we’ll get to know each other. Saaaaaay,” he continued with a grin, “you didn’t happen to catch that article I wrote about you, did you? I thought it turned out kind of nice.”
Kate quacked. Had Dirk understood the language of ducks, he would have known he’d just been sworn at.
“The sun comes up before we hit Moncton,” whispered Dirk, digging something out of his bag. “I’m sure we can have a nice chat then about what you’re all doing.”
Dirk withdrew his camera from his bag and pointed it through the bars of Kate’s cage.
“Smile!”
Dirk clicked the shutter on his camera several times and set it aside. He grinned widely, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes.
“Your attention, please,” came a voice over the train’s loudspeaker. “Sorry for the interruption, folks. We’ll be pulling into Moncton in about twenty minutes. Moncton Station, twenty minutes.”
Kate peered out of her cage at Dirk. A cold shudder ran through her. Who would have thought such a dufus could throw her life into such chaos? His head was turned at an awkward angle, his cheek pressed into the headrest. His eyes were closed and his mouth hung wide open.
It had been a long, sleepless night. The train was still dark. If they were getting close to Moncton, it meant they had travelled all night through Quebec and northern New Brunswick. Sunrise was only about a half-hour away.
John, however, was wide awake. He uncurled himself from his spot on the floor and reached across the aisle to grab a magazine from under the seat opposite. It was an issue of Cosmo. Kate thought it was an odd time for a werewolf to start thinking about fashion trends and relationship quizzes.
John laid the magazine in front of Kate’s cage. He used his paw to cover up every letter of the title but the first. “C.”
He winked, hoping his message was clear.
Plan C, thought Kate.
She stared into the wolf’s eyes. He was confident. Almost smiling. Without words, there was no way he could communicate what his new plan was. If they were going to do this, she was just going to have to trust him. Again.
She nodded.
John turned to Wacka, who sat sleeping in her chair. He pressed his cold nose into the back of her hand.
“I’M BLIND,” she groaned.
Kate hissed a quiet warning. Wacka’s eyes flew open and darted from the duck in the cage to the sleeping reporter. Dirt Bag shifted in his seat, rolling his head to face the other direction. “I swear,” he mumbled, “I swear it was a duck.” His eyes remained closed. Wacka, John, and Kate waited until they heard his steady breathing resume.
John gently tugged Wacka’s shirtsleeve. She stood up, slung John’s backpack over her shoulder, and carefully picked up Kate’s cage.
John led them through the rows of sleeping passengers. Wacka opened the back door and walked through to the space between cars. The click-click, click-clack of the wheels rolling on the rails rattled through the space. A red-and-white sign on the outside door read: WARNING! Do not open while train is in motion.
“Quack,” quacked Kate. She had a sudden feeling John’s Plan C involved not heeding that warning. She had no desire to jump out of a moving train.
John ignored her and pawed instead at the door that led to the next car. Wacka opened it. It was empty. John led them to the back, past the door of the tiny bathroom. He began to dig at the mountain of hockey gear, trying to expose the back door of the train.
“KATIE,” said Wacka. “KATIE, WHAT IS JOHN DOING?”
Kate quacked. Wacka lifted the latch on her cage, and Kate waddled out. John pawed hockey sticks away from the door and dragged a hockey bag from the top of the pile with his teeth.
“Well, well, well,” came a voice from behind them. “Thought you might get away before the sun came up, did you?” Dirt Bag stood smirking at the front of the car. His camera strap was wrapped around his wrist. He looked at his watch. “Oh, and look at that. It’s almost sunrise.”
Dirk raised the camera and pointed it at them. “We’ll call these the ‘before’ shots for the front cover of Really Real News,” he said, clicking the shutter over and over, “and, just maybe, The New York Times.” He lowered the camera. His smirk had faded to a scowl. “No one believed me when I tried to tell the truth about you. They all thought it was all some big joke. Nobody will be laughing this time, when I expose you for what you really are, you filthy, no-good—”
“KATIE, I DON’T LIKE
THIS MAN!” yelled Wacka.
Dirk strode down the aisle toward them. “Ah, yes. Our blind friend,” said Dirk. “I can’t quite figure out what role you play in all of this.”
“I’M BLIND!” exclaimed Wacka.
“Riiiiight,” said Dirk, rolling his eyes. He made a quick jump toward her. She flinched. “Nope,” he said, plucking the sunglasses off her face. “How’d you get mixed up with a couple of mangy werekids?”
John growled.
“Ooooh, the big bad wolf,” teased Dirk. He snapped a photo of John’s snarling face. “Oh, yeah, that’s a good one. Lots of teeth. People will be—”
Kate had had enough. She flew at Dirk, quacking and scratching at him with her feet.
“Hey! What the—”
Dirk waved his arms wildly at the flailing duck. Kate’s wings knocked the camera from his hands. As Wacka leaned over to pick it up, John leap-frogged over her and grabbed Dirk by the pant leg.
“Hey!” he cried again. “Let go!”
John pulled him by the hem of his pants to the back of the car, with Kate offering aerial support.
Wacka stood up, examining the camera like it was some kind of foreign object. She pointed it at Dirk’s face and clicked the shutter.
“DIE, ALIEN SCUM!” she cried. The flash blinded Dirk as the shutter clicked again and again.
Dirk tripped backward over John. He landed with his back against the bathroom door. John lunged again, pushing Dirk through the door and onto the floor of the bathroom.
“Get off of me!” yelled Dirk as he struggled against the wolf.
Kate could see what John had in mind. She hopped up onto the pile of hockey gear and quacked furiously to get Wacka’s attention.
Dirk yowled in pain as John’s teeth sunk into his ankle. He wrenched Dirk the rest of the way into the bathroom. The door slammed behind him.
“ALIEN SCUM!” yelled Wacka, sliding a hockey stick into the door handle, locking it shut.
The door jiggled furiously as Dirk tried to open it. The hockey stick was holding for now, but might slip out of place at any moment.
“Hey! What’s going on?” yelled Dirk. “Let me out of here!”
“Quack!” exclaimed Kate. She looked out the windows and saw a faint glow in the sky. Sunrise was only moments away. It was time to do something drastic. They needed to get off the train.
Kate quacked again and took off flying over the rows of empty seats toward the front of the car.
“KATIE, WAIT!” yelled Wacka, running after. John bounded along behind them. They passed through the door leading to the space between cars. The clickety-clack roared in their ears.
“Quack!” said Kate, hopping onto the handle of the outside door. “Quack, quack, quack!”
John leaped up to push the door open with his front paws. The door slid aside, revealing a rush of trees and gravel moving past. The open door triggered an alarm that buzzed throughout the train.
Wacka stared out the door with wide eyes. “KATIE WANT WACKA TO JUMP?”
Kate gulped. Even with the train moving slowly, jumping seemed reckless, but they needed to get away. Now.
Wacka grasped a metal railing with one hand and leaned outside. She peered in the direction they were travelling.
“KATIE! KATIE!” she exclaimed over the sound of the train. “LOOK, KATIE! RIVER!”
Kate poked out her head and saw a green sign whiz past with the words Boundary Creek painted in white. The train was approaching a bridge spanning a small river.
“KATIE!” exclaimed Wacka, picking up Kate. “WACKA JUMP! WACKA HOLD KATIE!”
Wacka grasped Kate in one arm and held onto the metal railing with the other. John stood beside her, ready to jump. Air rushing past rippled his fur. They were nearly there. The wind roared in their ears. There was no time to reconsider.
“ONE,” began Wacka, rocking back and forth. “TWO....” The bank of the river whooshed past. It was time. “THREE!”
Wacka, John, and Kate leaped from the train. They fell through the cool morning air, plunging toward the surface of the water dozens of metres below.
Dirk gripped the latch of the bathroom door and gave it one final tug. He collapsed backward onto the sink as the hockey stick rattled free and the door swung in. Dirk climbed over the stick and ran up the aisle after the kids, limping slightly from the bite on his ankle.
He entered the space between cars and found the outside door hanging wide open. That would explain the incessant alarm.
Could they have jumped? wondered Dirk. Even at this speed, it would be suicide. He leaned out the door to see if he could spot anything.
“Sir!” shouted a stern voice from behind him. “Sir, step away from the door!”
Dirk turned to find a uniformed security officer staring at him.
“It’s not what you think—” began Dirk.
“I think a whole lot of things,” said the officer, eyeing Dirk suspiciously. “Step away from the door.”
Dirk obeyed. The officer leaned past him to pull the door closed. The buzzing alarm stopped. He reached for his walkie-talkie.
“Yeah, this is Boudreau,” said the officer, one eye still on Dirk as if he thought he might make a run for it. “I’ve secured the door. Everything is locked down.”
“Really, it’s not what you think. I didn’t open the door.”
“Sure you didn’t,” replied Boudreau.
“I didn’t!” insisted Dirk. “It was…that blind girl…and her wolf…and the duck. They must have jumped.”
Boudreau stared blankly at Dirk. “A blind girl with a duck and a wolf jumped from the train?” he repeated.
“Yes,” said Dirk confidently.
“Okay,” said Boudreau. He reached again for his walkie-talkie. “I’m going to need a bit of backup here. We’ve got a live one.”
Ernie hit the “scan” button on the radio of his truck. Driving a big rig back and forth across the country like he did, it seemed like every time he found a good classic rock station, he lost the signal a few minutes later. He let the radio cycle through the dial a few times before settling on a station playing an AC/DC tune.
Ernie nodded his head to the beat and hummed a few bars of the guitar riff. He’d been driving all night and needed loud, energetic music to keep him awake. A faint glow in the east showed sunrise wasn’t far off. Just a few more hours on the road, and he’d be in Halifax. He’d unload his trailer, grab some grub, and find a parking lot where he could sleep for a few hours.
He spotted a sign announcing the big truck stop just before Moncton. He looked at his gas gauge and decided he had enough to make it the rest of the way to Halifax. No need to stop just yet.
He was about to breeze past the exit when he remembered his passengers in the back.
“Aw, shoot,” he said, engaging the engine brakes. The engine roared in protest as the truck slowed enough for him to steer onto the exit ramp.
“Boundary Creek,” he muttered to himself, glancing at the map sitting on the seat beside him. It was just a stone’s throw from the highway. He’d be there in a few minutes.
Ernie drove along the country road in the early morning darkness. He wasn’t sure exactly where in Boundary Creek these folks wanted to be dropped off. He slowed the truck to halt beside the sign that marked the edge of the community. He killed the engine. The sudden quiet engulfed the peaceful stretch of road.
Ernie climbed down from the cab and walked around to the back of the truck. He had hesitated when the guy asked him for a ride, but this errand turned out to be no big deal. The two hundred bucks the guy offered sure didn’t hurt. Maybe this time he’d order the big breakfast.
He unlocked the latch on the door and pulled it open.
“Okey-dokey,” he announced. “Boundary Creek. Not sure where you guys—”
Ernie fro
ze in terror as he found himself staring into the yellow eyes of a giant, fearsome, black wolf. The wolf lowered its face to Ernie’s and let out a low growl.
Ernie stumbled backward onto the gravel shoulder of the road. “No!” he shouted, scrambling away on his hands and knees. “No! Get away! Get away!”
The wolf jumped down from the trailer; the boy climbed down after.
“It’s okay,” said Bobby. “He’s not going to hurt you. Just…go back to your truck. You never saw us, okay?”
Ernie wrenched around to look at the wolf. Marcus growled again.
“I never saw nothin’!” Ernie shouted, his eyes full of fear. He scrambled to his feet and ran towards the cab of his truck. “Just leave me alone!” The engine roared to life before Ernie had even pulled the door closed.
Marcus stopped growling, turned to Bobby, and nodded. The small pack strapped around Marcus’s chest holding his clothes was a bit snug. He twisted his body to give himself more breathing space.
Marcus glanced around to get his bearings. It had been years since he had been in this place, but he knew exactly where he was. When he and John had spent last summer in New Brunswick, he’d scanned the phone book to confirm Laura still lived at the same address. He’d be at her house in minutes. He only hoped he would arrive before John.
Laura hadn’t slept at all. She sat motionless in her chair, watching the back door. Her hand gripped the revolver, waiting for the sun to rise, which, to her relief, looked as if it was about to happen. It was some comfort knowing that when her nightmare arrived, it would at least be in human form. Maybe she wouldn’t need the gun after all.
She stood up and walked to the screen door. She scanned the line of trees that marked the edge of her backyard where the forest began.
She gasped.
Just a moment before, there had been nothing but shadows. Now there stood the hulking silhouette of a wolf. It stared at her from the darkness. The wolf stepped out of the brush at the edge of the forest and into the dim light of dawn.
Cure for Wereduck Page 11